1. If President Barack Obama is re-elected, with the Democratic Party retaining control of at least one chamber of Congress, there probably will be four more years of economic stagnation, high unemployment, increasing poverty and inequality, more wars, erosions of civil liberties and global warming.

2. If Mitt Romney is elected, with the right/far right Republican Party dominating either House or Senate, every particular of the travail afflicting the country today will be multiplied, with emphasis on fulfilling the desires of the 1% at the expense of the 99%.

What else could be expected during the present conservative era? Paul Krugman, the liberal Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist, recently described Obama, whom he supports, as having ruled like “a moderate Republican circa 1992″. Viewing the ultra-conservatives, African American professor and left intellectual Cornell West detected “creeping fascism.”

In today’s society — based on gross economic inequality facilitated by a two-party political system spanning center right to far right and where big money is the decisive factor in the electoral process — an ostensibly democratic election can hardly mitigate the worst of abuses afflicting working people and their families much less bring about substantial reform.

This dreary reality is offset by an important new development. For the first time over the last several presidential elections — when voters are usually cheering exclusively for their candidate — masses of people are protesting in the streets against inequality of income and opportunity, and the class war waged by the wealthy, as well as global warming, ending wars, dismantling NATO and the like. Some unions, too, are not simply backing Obama but protesting on their own against Wall Street’s depredations.

Thirty years of wage stagnation, the growing rich-poor chasm, evisceration of the so-called American Dream and the long, painful effects of the Great Recession are the objective conditions behind the developing political consciousness of many Americans. Like the Roman Catholic church after widespread evidence of priests molesting children, sacrosanct capitalism — the economic holy of holies — is finally attracting public criticism for its crimes and hypocrisy, not yet on a huge scale but growing.

The sudden entrance of Occupy Wall St. last September with an open critique of the substantial excesses of capitalism in American society, following the democratic Arab Spring and Wisconsin uprising, has energized much of the left and progressive forces. Nationwide May Day actions and the 15,000 who demonstrated against NATO in Chicago later in May, among other protests, including civil disobedience, are encouraging harbingers that many more people eventually will take their grievances to the streets and meeting halls, where all social progress begins. If this momentum manages to continue for the next few years it could become a broad and diverse national movement for social change — but it’s still a big “if.”

The political system seems no longer accountable to the public. Several matters of great importance to the American people do not even figure in this year’s election because both ruling parties basically agree  about them and there’s little to squabble about but details. The administration has taken the U.S. up to its elbows in the quagmire of war, so the conservatives cry, “up to the shoulders!” Here are some issues the voters won’t be able to influence at the ballot box:

• President Obama is presiding over U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen, killing “terrorist suspects” in Somalia and wherever the CIA’s drones wander. May opinion polls show 66% of the American people want the expensive 10-year-old stalemated Afghan conflict to end, and 40% — many of whom want it terminated now — are strongly opposed. Only 27% support the war, 8% strongly. For all the chatter about nearing the end of the Afghan war at the NATO summit in Chicago May 20, Obama, days earlier, announced that he was prolonging the war a decade after his “final” pullout date at the end of 2014. An undetermined number of special forces combat troops, military trainers, and CIA paramilitaries will “defend” the corrupt Kabul government until 2024. American taxpayers will foot the bills — several billion a year. Progressive Democrats in Congress seek to restrain Washington’s penchant for wars, but they are consistently ignored and occasionally berated by the Obama Administration for their efforts.

• Most citizens want cuts in the war budget. But as they go to the polls, the American people will be lugging a military and national security behemoth on their recession-bent backs, costing about $1.2 trillion a year. Rumors of meaningful reductions are illusory. The Pentagon accounts for over half of this amount (about $642 billion for fiscal 2013); the rest goes to Homeland Security, 17 spy agencies, nuclear weapons, interest on past war debts, and so on.

• Global warming is here and getting worse while the White House is opening up new areas to drill for oil and supports massive development of shale-derived natural gas (which requires fracking), “clean” coal (though it does not yet exist), nuclear power, and dirty tar sands fuel. The Obama Administration’s support for alternative non-carbon development is a token tossed to the environmental movement. Meanwhile, the U.S. — which demands to be recognized as world leader — is using its leadership to undermine international progress in fighting climate change. Big business and Wall St., primarily concerned with expansion and greater profits, heartily approve. Like Rhett Butler, the conservatives, frankly, just don’t give a damn.

• Since he has borrowed populist phrases for the election, some of from Occupy, President Obama has finally at least mentioned poverty, inequality and low wages, but he has done nothing about this situation since taking office and will not put forward an anti-poverty program if reelected. The United States is the most economically unequal of the top 20 advanced, industrialized capitalist economies in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The U.S. also pays the lowest wages to its working class compared with OECD countries. Almost 25% of the American work force receives low wages (about $10 an hour down to minimum wage and below), usually without any benefits or health care. One in two Americans is low income or poor. The poor account for one in seven people. About 47 million Americans require food stamps to eat. Food stamps are the only “income” for six million of them. This has not come about by mistake; it’s the political system’s payoff to the ever-richer plutocracy and its minions.

• The Obama Administration has responded more resourcefully to the Great Recession than the conservative opposition, but it only goes a quarter or half  way in remedial action, which adds to the stagnation and prolongs the pain for the working class, lower middle class and a large sector of the middle class as well. When Obama delivers on the economy — whether in the stimulus, jobs, foreclosures, bank regulations, or infrastructure — it’s always partial and inadequate because the main concessions are made with the power structure up front before the inevitable compromises with the right wing. There’s a difference between talking like a fighter when trawling for votes, and avoiding confrontation as president. Krugman says “we have responded to crisis with a mix of paralysis and confusion.” This is a major reason why over 22 million Americas need but cannot secure full time work.

• President Obama has retained all former President Bush’s many erosions of civil liberties, particularly the onerous Patriot Act, and added many of his own, such as when he approved of indefinite detention for suspects, including American citizens. A unique coalition of liberals and conservatives in the House tried to pass legislation to reject indefinite detention May 18, but the effort was defeated. The U.S., under Obama, is becoming a full fledged surveillance state. Tom Engelhardt writes that “30,000 people [are] hired to listen in on conversations and other communications in this country.”

• Any listing of the important issues that are not part of the election campaign and over which the citizenry has no say must include a foreign/military/national security policy based on exercising world hegemony backed by military power. What’s the “pivot” to East Asia really all about, other than to weaken China in its own sphere of possible influence and cling to world domination? Why has the U.S. been taking steps to bring about regime change in Syria, other than to dominate yet another country and weaken Iran in the process? Why did Obama facilitate a violent civil war for regime change in Libya, other than to gain another oil-rich client state, but this time with an enormous aquifer under its sands which may become more precious than the oil as water supplies dwindle through North Africa? Why did the president get behind the coup in Honduras, other than to dispatch a potentially progressive regime friendly to Venezuela?

Further, why does Obama still maintain Cold War sanctions and a trade blockade against Cuba, other than to win Florida votes in November? Why is Washington supporting the vicious Sunni monarchy in Bahrain which routinely oppresses and attacks the Shi’ite majority seeking equality, other than satisfying the obnoxious rulers of Saudi Arabia? Why is Obama now fighting a war in Yemen, other than to keep the new president, who ran unopposed with strong U.S. support, in his pocket, and to bestow another favor upon the Saudi lords? Why is the administration seeking to strangle Iran, other than to prevent an Iran-Iraq alliance that might compromise U.S. hegemony in the Middle East, especially the Persian Gulf, through which 40% of the world’s oil must pass? And what is the real purpose of the Oval Office’s new “scramble for Africa,” other than establishing a military presence throughout the continent while elbowing China out of the way to grab natural resources, trade and markets.

President Obama blames all his failures in office on the conservatives and the recession, and most Democrats accept this explanation. Even progressive Democrats, well aware of Obama’s abundant shortcomings, will cut him slack for fear of the “greater evil.”

The corrosive impact of far right ideology in America must not be underestimated. But despite Don’t-tread-on-me Tea Party reactionaries and conservative obstruction in Congress, Democrats in the House and Senate remain responsible for many unmet objectives and a weak legislative record. Led by Obama, they would not fight for progressive goals and spent much of the time trying to fulfill the naïve presidential fantasy of “governing like Americans, not Republicans or Democrats.” Once the conservatives understood Obama would rather compromise than fight they attacked full force and virtually paralyzed the Democratic agenda.

The silence of some Democratic politicians toward the erosion of civil liberties, indifference to climate change and support for unnecessary wars — a silence many would have broken had a Republican been in the White House — should subject them to publicly wearing scarlet letters inscribed with a “C” (for craven) around their necks.

Despite the stagnant economy —  the main issue in the election according to 86% of potential voters — the Republican Party’s lurch to the far right and the bizarre legislative behavior of the Tea Party-influenced GOP House majority led by the ineffable Speaker John Boehner seem to have at least evened the election odds. Stranger things have happened in American politics, but it remains very doubtful that the critically important independent voters will swing toward fringe conservatism. This factor, in our view, gives Obama the edge.

In this connection the April 28 international edition of Britain’s conservative magazine, The Economist, wondered “What happens to a two-party political system when one party goes mad?” The article quotes the following from the new book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, a product of one author from the establishment Brookings Institute and the other from the conservative American Enterprise Institute: “The Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

Many right wing voters despise Romney, a shape-shifting opportunist whom they distrust, but they will stick with him because Republican leaders and funders insist he has the best chance to defeat the “big government socialist” whom many Tea Partiers scandalously allege conceals his “true” nationality and religion. Those funders, by the way, will see to it that — as opposed to 2008 — the Republicans will spend at least enough money to buy the election as the Democrats, so the race should be close.

Once a moderate Republican, Romney adopted far right positions on most issues to secure the nomination, calling for severe cutbacks in social programs for the poor, unemployed, foreclosed and similarly discarded, among a plethora of counterproductive social and economic nostrums satisfying to the Rush Limbaughs and Michele Bachmanns. Now he’s in a tight bind. It is absolutely necessary to gravitate partially toward the center, where the independent votes are, but he is under considerable restraint from his own unforgiving constituency.

Consistent with mendacious ultra-conservative propaganda, Romney attributes the economic crisis entirely to Obama’s presidency, without suggesting that the Great Recession emanated from the millionaire tax cuts, war spending and the huge deficits of his Republican predecessor (following years of Clinton Administration deregulations of banking and Wall St. that set the stage for what by now had become a “winner take all” economic system.)

Romney’s nonsensical economic speech in Iowa May 15 was an epic self-exposure. While promising to cut social spending, increase the war budget and not raise taxes, he declared:

President Obama is an old-school liberal whose first instinct is to see free enterprise as the villain and government as the hero…. America counted on President Obama to rescue the economy, tame the deficit and help create jobs. Instead, he bailed out the public sector, gave billions of dollars to the companies of his friends and added almost as much debt as all the prior presidents combined.

Virtually every word was a lie, according to an analysis of the entire speech by the Associated Press the next day which pointed out that “the debt has gone up by about half under Obama. Under Ronald Reagan, it tripled.” AP didn’t mention Romney’s political characterization of Obama, but he’s hardly a liberal — as was clear during his first term, and his adhesion to “free enterprise” capitalism is indissoluble.

Romney has been sharply critical of Obama on two of the biggest issues of the campaign — health care and the Afghan war —  despite the fact that his own past positions on both matters were nearly identical to those of his rival. Obama’s health care plan is based on the program Romney implemented as governor of Massachusetts. And despite far more hawkish rhetoric to please the far right during the primaries, the Republican’s views on Afghanistan did not differ markedly from those of Obama. In recent weeks before and after the NATO summit, Romney has hardly spoken of the Afghan war, obviously recognizing that his primary views are anathema to the American people as a whole.

Obama and Romney have agreed on other issues. An article in Grist, April 24 by Lisa Hymas pointed out that  Obama’s “smart growth” initiative — the Partnership for Sustainable Communities — was also created in the mold of a Romney program…. As governor, Romney actively fought sprawl and promoted density. He ran on a smart-growth platform: ‘Sprawl is the most important quality-of-life issue facing Massachusetts,’ he said in 2002…. Under President Obama, the EPA moved from praising Romney’s smart-growth office to mimicking it.” It went into effect in June 2009. Romney also supported abortion rights, environmentalism and immigration as governor.

These “coincidences” are the outstanding ironies of the campaign so far. “Far right” Romney and “liberal populist” Obama have both resembled “moderate Republicans” when in power. Obama will revert to his center-right configuration if reelected, but if Romney ever gets to the White House his constituency will force him to largely govern as an ultra-conservative.

A principal Republican issue in the past several presidential elections has been that the Democrats were “weak on defense,” including in 2008 when Obama opposed the Iraq war, but the right wing has lowered the volume significantly because it can’t work this year.

The Democratic Party, of course, voted for, supported and funded the Afghan and Iraq wars, but Obama defeated pro-war Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination because his critique of the disastrous adventure in Iraq accorded with that of most Democratic primary voters — then turned around when elected and stole the Republican thunder by transforming into a war president. He governs foreign/military affairs as a hawk, juggling several bloody conflicts simultaneously, abjectly pandering to the armed forces and fostering the growth of militarism in American society. A year after the Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa, the Obama Administration has launched its own Imperialist Spring in the same region.

Many Democrats voted for Obama in the 2008 primaries because he was considered a “peace candidate” of sorts. A recent article by Atlantic Magazine staff writer Conor Friedersdorf compiled a brief partial account of Obama’s “peace” record:

• Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan, adding tens of thousands of troops at a cost of many billions of dollars. • He committed American forces to a war in Libya, though he had neither approval from Congress nor reason to think events there threatened national security. • He ordered 250 drone strikes that killed at least 1,400 people in Pakistan. • He ordered the raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. • He ordered the killings of multiple American citizens living abroad. • He expanded the definition of the War on Terrorism and asserted his worldwide power to indefinitely detain anyone he deems a terrorist. • He expanded drone attacks into Somalia. • He ordered a raid on pirates in Somalia. • He deployed military squads to fight the drug war throughout Latin America. • He expanded the drone war in Yemen, going so far as to give the CIA permission to kill people even when it doesn’t know their identities so long as they’re suspected of ties to terrorism. • He’s implied that he’d go to war with Iran rather than permitting them to get nuclear weapons.”

No matter who wins in November nothing listed above will change, except perhaps for the worse. If Obama returns to the White House, it will be to the same mess the U.S. finds itself in today, along with the wars, inequality and hardship. Should Romney get in it will be a mess on steroids.

Progressive change certainly remains possible in America, although neither ruling party is equipped to bring it about. These parties were not prepared to end the Vietnam war either, or to get rid of Jim Crow, or to implement the eight-hour day, or to allow women the democratic right to vote. But the people organized radical mass movements to fight for these goals and won.

The informal people’s struggles of various organizations that began coalescing early last year, propelled several months later by Occupy’s left critique of inequality, Wall St. and the 1% ruling plutocracy, has the potential to become a mass movement. Many such potentials have come along and faded for various reasons, including some that were co-opted or lost their vision. But such broad and deep movements — as long as they are massive, activist, radical and well organized — also have significantly changed American history. It may be a long, arduous struggle, but that’s the light at the end of this dismal electoral tunnel.

The Secretary of State has recommended that the application [for the pipeline] be denied…I agree…This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but [on] the arbitrary nature of a deadline.

Obama even hinted at his future support of the pipeline: “[there may be] development of an oil pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf of Mexico.” These deceptive words used by the President made me think:  Is the president heavily influenced by Big Oil or is the statement he made in the 2008 campaign, “I don’t take money from oil companies” true?

The election campaign of 2008 was a hard-fought campaign on all sides, mostly which involved lots of corporate sponsors since all the “frontrunners” were awash with money. Then-Senator Barack Obama raised $745 million dollars and spent $730 million dollars. $916,162 of those dollars came from the Oil and Gas industry according to OpenSecrets. A FactCheck.org post continued this message, nine months before the Presidential election was held, noting that Obama received over $66,000 dollars from employees at ExxonMobil, Hess, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and British Petroleum (BP). In addition, the post noted that “two oil industry executives…bundl[ed] money for Obama” one of which was a multi-billionaire. A Reuters article in May 2008 noted that BP contributed more to Obama’s campaign than it had contributed to federal candidates since the late 1980s. Even with these contributions, one may be unsure of Big Oil’s real impact on Barack Obama.

Steve Coll’s new book, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Empire, sheds light on part of that impact, especially on ExxonMobil’s role in the election. According to Coll, in the 2008 Presidential campaign, Obama “spoke most pointedly about ExxonMobil…[and] offered none of the nuanced support he had voiced to Chad’s dictator Idriss Deby [in 2006]” about the inviolability of international oil contracts.  Even with this aggressive tact, he seemed to exploit the unpopularity of ExxonMobil for his own benefit. He pushed the idea of American ‘energy independence’ even though, according to Coll, it is “not achievable [or] desirable.” In addition, every time he used the word “ExxonMobil” it seemed to work in his favor. But, according to the Washington Independent, individual Exxon, Chevron and BP contributors preferred Barack Obama. At the same time, he boldly declared that “we must end the age of oil in our time.” Still, the Washington Post wrote in January 2008 that “one of Obama’s foreign policy advisers on the Middle East [Daniel Shapiro]… registered to lobby for several corporate clients…including…the American Petroleum Institute.” Also, three political aides on the Obama’s campaign payroll were lobbyists for corporations such as BP. Still, after his victory over John McCain in the Presidential election, ExxonMobil changed its approach to the political arena.

As Obama was entering the Presidency, Eric Foner, of The Nation Magazine, called him “Our Lincoln” and Time Magazine named him “Person of the Year.” Just like the online game, Oiligarchy, made by Mollenindustria, President Obama became “oiled,” and would work in the interest of Big Oil due to its campaign contributions to his presidential election campaign.

In May 2009, Obama appointed Steve Koonin, the former Chief Scientist of BP, to be second Undersecretary for Science in the Department of Energy (he was confirmed shortly after by the U.S. Senate). The next year, Koonin became a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.  Also, the former contact employee for Goldman Sachs, Rahm Emanuel, who was Obama’s Chief of Staff for 21 months, lived for five years in a “rent-free…D.C. apartment of…Rep. Rosa DeLauro…and her husband, Stanley Greenberg,” whose firm was the creator of “BP’s…green…slogan “Beyond Petroleum.”” At the same time, Goldman Sachs had a huge investment in BP, which it sold in early 2010 for an unknown reason, pocketing “slightly more than $266 million” according to Raw Story, an independent news site. Currently the company owns about 2% of BP’s stock.

This connection of Obama to Big Oil is not based around stocks, rather around policy that has been enacted or pushed. In the early days of his administration, a cap-and-trade bill failed in Congress. According to an online site about cap-and-trade this policy has its problems. Ralph Nader says it would cause a war “between interest groups seeking billions in carbon credit handouts and the regulator[s].” The Institute of Energy Research states it will hurt jobs, “make Canadian oil more expensive than oil from the Middle East…[and] create…incentives to import more oil from the Middle East.” The political magazine, Corporate Knights continues this criticism. They remark that “the President has not stood up to the climate-denial machine” and has been increasingly silent on the issue of a changing climate. At the same time, they wonder why Obama is not doing “far more to defend the science” of global warming.

In November 2009 the pro-Big Oil policy was evident once again. According to AlterNet, Obama and “his administration [were]…vocal and active proponents” of an Iraqi law that permitted new oil contracts in the country, which are also called protection sharing agreements (PSAs). The law offered oil companies “a 75 percent stake” in oil development, “reduced the amount the foreign companies pay in taxes…allow[ed]…them to use private security forces to protect their facilities” and let foreign companies to “hire and train [non]Iraqi workers and…transfer…needed technology.” At the same time, the law made companies pay “reimbursement fees for capital and operational expenses…[and] den[ied foreign] companies [from]…book[ing] reserves.”  Under this agreement, different corporations were given the ability to drill in Iraqi oil fields: BP, ExxonMobil and Shell Oil Company got sweet deals in Iraq, drilling in areas with 4-18 billion barrels of oil. Other foreign oil companies won out as well, but these American companies were some the big bread winners and the Obama Administration’s support of the law is no coincidence.

The next year, the international environmental NGO, the Bellona Foundation, noted a Presidential decision that missed the headlines. President Obama, one month before the explosion of the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig reversed a “20 year moratorium…open[ed much of]… the Atlantic coast line, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling…[and] at the same time [he] reject[ed]…some sites that had been propose[d in]…Alaska, California and Oregon.” Then less than thirty days later, the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill began. The aftermath showed the collusion of policy with Big Oil. Even, Sarah Palin, roundly denounced by “liberals” for her seemingly crazy statements told a Fox News show, “I don’t know why the question isn’t asked…if there’s any connection with the contributions made to President Obama and his administration and the support by the oil companies to the administration.” Recently, others have even suggested that “the Obama administration went easy on BP before the 2010 oil spill in return for a pledge to support cap-and-trade legislation.” Two years later, Black Agenda Report came out with an article attacking Obama’s inaction: “Barack Obama and his Democrats passed no new laws, promulgated no new executive decisions to regulate Big Oil…the damages recoverable from BP’s holdings [were restricted to]…its Gulf revenues [not revenues on other continents]… [which] ensur[ed]…BP’s reckless operations in the gulf of Mexico [would]…continue.”

After the spill occurred, President Obama and his administration quickly worked to clean up the oil in the Gulf of Mexico. In that process, a dispersant named Corexit was poured into Gulf, 2 million gallons by mid-June 2011, with the green light from Obama and his administration. But everyone didn’t follow the administration line. According to Democracy Now!, “many lawmakers and advocacy groups sa[id]…the Obama administration [was]…not being candid about the lethal effects of dispersants.” At the same time, residents on the Gulf Coast were outraged that Kenneth Feinburg’s “$20 billion government-administered claim fund [would]…subtract money cleanup workers earn by working for the cleanup effort.” Also this claim fund was seen as an “effort to limit the number of lawsuits against BP.” Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst of the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response at the time, boldly said the government was “sock puppets for BP in this cover-up…by hiding the amount of spill [which]…sav[ed] [BP] hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in fines.” In addition to this corruption, many numbers of EPA and OSHA Administrators said the chemical was safe, but it was not. Kaufman went even further saying that the company, BlackRock is run by Larry Fink who has connections to “Mr. Geithner, Mr. Summers and others in the administration.” He concluded that the go ahead to disperse Corexit was part of a cover-up to hide BP’s use of “the volume of oil that has been released” into the Gulf from the American public.

The string of pro-Big Oil policy continued despite the “biggest investment in stimulating a green economy in history,” the creation of more green jobs, tax credits for wind energy, money for environmental maintenance, and greening federal buildings in the stimulus bill according to TreeHugger. For one, no one in BP has been criminally charged for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. A community fund to pay victims of the spill was set up, but there was no real damage to BP’s profits. Even a prosecution has started against BP but the trial was delayed by Judge Barbier until January 14, 2013, conveniently after the November presidential elections. In mid-2011, when the debt-ceiling crisis was occurring, the “Obama administration gave $12.4 million in research grants to oil and gas companies…to help the industry improve the way it drills for oil and gas” according to Daily Beast Contributor Daniel Stone. At the same time, Democrats in Congress were decrying a deal which would not cut subsidies for oil companies (about a year later, Obama would support gutting those subsidies). As the year continued, his policy was still deeply connected to Big Oil despite what was said in the articles of “clean capitalist” magazines like Corporate Knights.

Earlier that year in March 2011, President Obama began a war in Libya. Officially its purpose  was to “assist an international effort authorized by the United Nations…Security Council…to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe…[and stop] all attacks against civilians…[by] target[ing]…air defense systems, command and control structures…of Gaddafi’s armed forces.” As a result, this war was advertised by the Obama Administration as a humanitarian war. But the real reason for war was not humanitarian reasons, it was oil. Antiwar.com lays it out clearly. In 2008, Gaddafi threatened the oil companies in Libya and then made an agreement that promised billions of barrels of oil with tough conditions to American oil companies. At the same time, the U.S. government plotted to stop the Russian oil company Gazprom from gaining Libyan oil. When the Libyan revolution began, Gaddafi refused to step down.  The 2008 agreement and the plot to stop the Russian oil company, connected to Vladimir Putin, was threatened. In addition, University of London Professor Gilbert Achar noted that a huge massacre in Libya would cause an “embargo on Libyan oil” which would hurt the volatile oil markets. This revealed the real reason for entering a war into Libya: Oil. Representative Ed Markey at the time also said the war was because of oil.

The connections of the war to oil are different depending on what source the information comes from. Black Star News in an April 2011 post echoed the positions of antiwar.com and Gilbert Achar. They argued that the war occurred because “America wants to control Africa’s oil supply…[and protect] U.S. oil companies and others are presently invested in Libya; these companies include Marathon, Hess, Conoco, Gulf, Occidental, British Petroleum (BP).” The post finally gets to the punch: “This [war] is about oil and power, not saving people.  It’s about maximizing profits.” Robert Dreyfuss of The Nation had a different analysis. He noted that “Libya’s new leaders…plan to favor their NATO backers [one of which is the United States] when handing out access to Libya’s oil.” Peter Dale Scott goes even farther, saying that the war was about protecting the declining “global petrodollar economy” which Gaddafi threatened just like Saddam Hussein did before the Iraq invasion in 2003. Whatever the reason, it is clear that the war was about oil (it cost over $1.1 billion dollars, according to Politifact) and was in Big Oil’s interest.

In the month of the Libya war beginning, March 2011, President Obama made a speech at Georgetown University officially about “America’s energy security.” In the speech, Obama touted the use of alternative energy, nuclear power, coal, natural gas and oil all together, later called the “all-of-the above” strategy. More importantly, he announced a goal to cut America’s dependence on oil by one-third through his “all-of-the above” energy plan. However, he noted that to achieve this plan, America’s oil supply would have to be increased through expediting drilling permits for oil companies. Yet again, the President was on the side of Big Oil. He remarked casually that after new supposedly “higher standards” had been put in place, the government had “approved 39 new shallow-water permits…seven deepwater permits…two permits last year for every new well that the industry started to drill” offshore. The influence of Big Oil in government was apparent once again as the discussion switched back to the aftermath of the Gulf Oil Spill. In the speech, Obama revealed that Secretary of Energy Steven Chu was sent by him down to “the BP offices [where]…he essentially designed the cap” that supposedly stopped the oil from leaking into the Gulf. If this doesn’t sound like collusion between BP and the national government, I don’t know what is.

A few months later in June 2011, President Obama made a rash decision. He decided to release 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. One news outlet, the Cable News Network (CNN) considered this an “economic stimulus…[in a time of] a looming supply  shortage…a wake up call to OPEC…[or] a warning shot to speculators in the oil market.” Other times in his administration he has tapped the national reserve, especially in times of “crisis”. This reserve was about 695.9 million barrels as of February 2012, which is about 36 days of oil consumption. Even though this is true, the releasing of oil just keeps America’s addiction on oil, which doesn’t solve any problems. It just keeps things at the status quo.

In late 2011 the policy of helping Big Oil continued. The infamous Keystone XL pipeline was proposed by TransCanada. It would be a pipeline that would snake across the western United States and would consist of drilling in dirty tar sands and overtopping the largest aquifer in the world, the Ogallala Aquifer. Environmental activists and other politicians opposed the action while others stood their ground, saying the pipeline would create jobs. An opinion posted on the Qatari-based news service, Al Jaazera, by a Tar Sands activist Bill McKibben expresses his frustration with the Obama Administration four months before the project was rejected. In his opinion, there were numerous “indication[s] from this administration…that it is prepared to grant the necessary permission for [this] project…[even] the State Department, at the recommendation of Keystone XL pipeline builder TransCanada, hired a second company to carry out the environmental review [which]…considered itself a “major client” of TransCanada.” This collusion of business and government to McKibben was “simply corrupt [and] potentially the biggest scandal of the Obama years,” an ongoing crime that President Obama didn’t even try to stop.

The Keystone XL pipeline’s rejection seemed a lapse in pro-Big Oil policy. But the pipeline was not delayed in January 2012 because of environmental considerations, but due to “the arbitrary nature of the deadline.” Even though there was a review done, it occurred with the help of one of TransCanada’s major clients. However, this was not a powerful pro-Big Oil development.  The powerful move was the renewed support of the “All of the Above” energy policy which was touted back in March 2011. In the 2008 Presidential campaign, Obama touted the same energy policy based in the nationalist idea of “energy independence.” In February 2012, Dan Pfeiffer, the White House Communications Director, justified such a policy by numerous statistics one would expect under a Republican administration:

Since 2008, U.S. oil and natural gases production has increased each year…[and] imports of foreign oil have decreased…[and] the Obama Administration put in place..new standards that ensured that [oil] drilling continued [after] the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

These were not the only justifications for this new energy policy. After the BP oil spill in the Gulf, hundreds of drilling permits for the region were approved by the Obama Administration. These numbers were higher than what Obama spoke of in March 2011. 308 permits were approved for “deep water drilling activities…and…113 permits for shallow water wells in the Gulf of Mexico.” More evidence of government collusion with Big Oil is the permitting of oil drilling “at levels seen before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill” on land and in the water. This resulted in “more oil produced [in 2011] in this country…since 2003.” This was conveniently made possible because America has more “oil…rigs at work in the field than the rest of the world.” While this seems like an overstatement, this phenomenon led the government to another conclusion. Obama allowed the “further exploration in the Arctic” and he established “an interagency Alaska working group…[to] review…Shells proposed exploration…in the Arctic.” For many environmentalists, this may be a betrayal of the initiatives in his administration that have helped the planet (pushing solar, wind, biofuels a little bit). Arctic exploration is not the only place the President pledges his support. Obama has allowed the building of dozens of pipelines in his term of office and has pledged to work with “TransCanada…to expedite the necessary federal permits” for the Keystone XL pipeline.

The next month, those permits were expedited. Obama signed an Executive Order on March 22nd, 2012 titled “Improving Performance of Federal Permitting and Review of Infrastructure Projects”. The Executive Order told all Federal Agencies and departments to “significantly reduce the…time required to make decisions [on]…permitting and review of [Federal government] infrastructure projects.” Also it mandated that all steps be taken “to execute Federal permitting and review processes with maximum efficiency and effectiveness, ensuring the health, safety, and security of communities and the environment while supporting vital economic growth.”  Even though there is talk of a safe community and the environment, this was meant to expedite the Keystone XL pipeline and future pipelines.

How can a full analysis occur if time is limited and “economic growth” is promoted? In the speeches he made the same day, March 22, his support of the pipeline is evident. He told a crowd, mostly of his supporters, in Maljamar, New Mexico that “we’ve announced our support for more [pipelines] including” the Keystone XL pipeline.  He repeated the same message at Ohio State University and in Cushing, Oklahoma. Cushing is where the President explained his justification for approving this leg of the pipeline, echoing the themes of his executive order:

There’s a bottleneck…here because we can’t get enough…oil to our refineries fast enough… TransCanada has applied to build a new pipeline to speed more oil from Cushing to…refineries down on the Gulf Coast.  And today, I’m directing my administration to cut through the red tape…and make this project a priority, to go ahead and get it done…So the southern leg of it [is] a [government] priority…The northern portion…[is] going to…[be] review[ed] properly…if [the government approves this pipeline]…we going to see jobs and growth…all across the country.

The following month, after the pro-pipeline speeches, Obama tried to act all tough against the oil and gas industry. According to an April 18th CNN Article, he required “drillers to capture emissions of certain air pollutants from new wells.” But under his direction, the Environmental Protection Agency allowed companies to “burn the pollutants [in question]…until the start of 2015” in a “nod to industry concerns [that the]…rules were being enacted too quickly.” This is not only a pro-Big Oil move, but it shows he weighs the concerns of the common American lower than that of Big Oil.

This month, the Obama Administration made what the independent blog site, Firedoglake, called “a deeply corrupt move.” Companies that used hydraulic fracturing (fracking) only needed to “disclose what chemicals they use after the well has been drilled.” This was giving in to Big Oil, thanks to meetings at the White House after the original rule was proposed three months earlier. Lobbyists representing those interests helped change the rule to their liking. As Firedoglake put it, the decision “to side with big oil over the American people and basic common sense” is pathetic. This decision is a further sign that Obama is an “oiled” president.

This corrupted nature comes back again when you look at Obama’s stance on speculation. His response has been weak-handed. He has said that should be investigated by Attorney General Eric Holder, “but nothing [really] has happened [because]… he seems to kind of accept the logic [that] we need to produce more domestic oil…and alternative energy sources” according to Paul Jay of the Real News Network.  In addition, Jay notes that Obama “doesn’t…talk…about the issue of speculation, about position limits [or about] the financialization [of oil].” Fidelity Investments continues this idea saying that “Obama would like to crack down…but he doesn’t talk about it often…or have enough friends in Congress [and that]…Obama’s attack on oil speculators…[is] doomed to join his legislative Wish List to Nowhere.” But this is not an issue isolated to Obama. The lack of action on these issues goes from the President to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and lack of a meeting of the CFTC’s Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee, created by the Dodd-Frank Act, since 2009. Then Fidelity gets to the punch: “Obama can’t keep his eye on the crude [oil] bubble for very long.”

As a result of all of these connections to Big Oil, it wouldn’t be a surprise that the President gets money from them. Even though this is true, Republicans receive most of the money from them resulting in ThinkProgress’s derogatory name: the “Grand Oil Party.” But, the facts are undeniable: Big Oil has given to the Obama reelection campaign. The ExxonMobil Corporation has already given Obama $14,914 and Chevron Corporation has given him $9,750; still both corporations favor Mitt Romney for President in terms of money. In addition, Koch Industries, which is usually considered a Tea Party financier, is also an oil refining company, has given Obama a measly $1,000. Not surprisingly, after the administration’s response to the Gulf Oil Spill, BP favors Obama’s reelection. More money was given to him than contributions to Eric Cantor and John Boehner combined. Overall, OpenSecrets details that President Obama is the 12th biggest recipient of money, out of the top 20 recipients in the oil and gas industry.  He has received $181,957 in his campaign coffers. This comes at a time after Obama supposedly led the effort to end Big Oil’s big tax breaks, which was defeated in the Senate due to their influence. In recent times, however, especially in the past year, it has become evident that Obama is on the side of Big Oil, more than ever.

Big Oil (the “supermajors”) is the world’s five or sometimes six biggest publicly-owned oil & gas companies including American-based Chevron, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips Company British-based Royal Dutch Shell and BP and French-based Total S.A. Of the American companies, Obama seems to be on their side completely and overall on Big Oil’s side. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s eight years in office was much more on the side of the oil companies, but Obama still has a significant stake. What benefits the powerful oil corporations in America will, in turn, benefit the other world players. If such companies have headquarters in the United States like BP and Royal Dutch Shell, this is firmly the case. President Obama is on the side of Big Oil and is subsequently an “oiled” President. Until the President admits that he is more on the side of the world’s large oil corporations than the middle class, he will continue rhetoric that seems to speak for all Americans.

An “ecumenical government”?

President Papoulias, himself a conservative politician coming from PASOK, concentrated initially his efforts to the formation of an “ecumenical government” supported by PASOK, New Democracy, Democratic Left and SYRIZA. At the Sunday meeting of the three political leaders, Samaras, Venizelos, and Tsipras (Kouvelis was not present), he showed an unofficial and unsigned (!) note by Lukas Papadimos, the former Prime Minister, who made a very pessimistic presentation of the economic situation, predicting the collapse of the Greek state and an inability to fulfill its obligations during June.

This was utilized to press for a government with the participation of SYRIZA as well as the three other parties as a “national need”. PASOK and New Democracy posed as willing to accept even a left government formed by SYRIZA and the Democratic Left, to which they would lend support without participating. However, such a government would in fact make SYRIZA a hostage to the other parties, since New Democracy and PASOK alone have 149 seats in Parliament, and the Democratic Left is much closer to them than to SYRIZA.

This attempt failed due to SYRIZA’s well-founded negative response, a position also taken by Panos Kammenos of the Independent Greeks, who declared he could not accept an informal paper as a basis to take political decisions.

It became thus clear that there was no real prospect of an “ecumenical government” being formed. After this, the efforts of the presidency turned to the formation of a non-political, technocratic government of the Monti type, which was proposed by the New Democracy leader, A. Samaras. Forming such a government would mean a further break from democratic rules and procedures than that made by the former Papadimos government. Moreover, in the severe situation facing Greece, it would definitely result in a total failure, since there is not the dimmest prospect of stabilizing it in a technocratic way even temporarily, as in Italy.

This attempt also failed due to the insistence of the Democratic Left that it would not consent to any solution unless SYRIZA also lent it support, which SYRIZA refused to do.

The Sunday events gave a chance to Samaras, Venizelos, and Kouvelis (those three had a joint meeting before the President later at Μonday evening) to accuse SYRIZA for taking an irresponsible and irreconcilable stance, not in accord with the grave situation and the will of the people. However hearing such accusations from the spokesmen of the former two big parties, who had been stuck for decades to an arrogant one-party administration, makes an ironic impression.

In fact, arrogance characterized the stance of the two ruling parties, which, despite their modest phraseology, were insisting on a solution prolonging their domination. Their hidden intention was to draw SYRIZA to a kind of government that would differ only insignificantly from the past memorandum governments. In this way they would make SYRIZA pay for the failure to get out of the crisis and, most importantly, avoid the “dangerous” prospect of a further radicalization and increasing protests by the people, of which recent elections gave much promise. The Democratic Left reproduced these claims as a result of its “ministerialism”, aiding in fact the reactionary plans with a left oratory.

All three parties, PASOK, New Democracy and the Democratic Left, were totally unwilling to form a government without SYRIZA, based on their sole support. They judged correctly that if they proceeded this way, the government would not stand long and their parties would face annihilation in any new elections.

A government of the right?

After the prospects of a ND-PASOK-DL-SYRIZA government had faded, attention shifted suddenly during Monday to the possibility of forming a government supported by New Democracy, PASOK and the Independent Greeks of Panos Kammenos. This in fact would be a government of the right, like the former Papadimos one, with the Independent Greeks taking the part of LAOS. It would be even weaker, since it would possess a much slimmer majority in a more severe situation.

The formation of such a government would clearly be more difficult than the ND-PASOK-DL one, since Kammenos in the pre-election period took a much harder “anti-memorandum” stance than the Democratic Left. He supported an immediate and unilateral denunciation of the memorandum, as compared to the “renegotiation” and “gradual disengagement” of Kouvelis. Kammenos formulated 7 conditions in order to take part in a government, which repeated the demand for unilateral denunciation, coupled with the nationalization of the Central Bank of Greece, the demand for a debt audit and some other points which the two former big parties had avoided for years and were not really ready to accept. Moreover, Kammenos would evidently have a great problem in justifying to his voters such a dramatic turn, and judging from the fate of LAOS and the fact that his newly founded party lacks any tradition and firm mass support, he would run an obvious danger of being smashed in next elections, perhaps after some months. This explains why the prospect of the right government had not appeared in former discussions and was not considered realistic by most commentators.

However Kammenos left open the question of such a government during his visit to president Papoulias, calling it an “ecumenical” one. Later on both Samaras and Venizelos consented to discussing the Kammenos 7 points, a fact indicative of the severe pressure exerted by the European Union for the formation of a government and avoidance of new elections. Kammenos agreed to visit President Papoulias today in the morning, to be supposedly presented with the official information he was asking about the economic situation. There were even rumors about the position of Prime Minister in the designed government being taken by Vasilios Markezinis, the son of Spyros Markezinis (a reactionary politician who became Prime Minister in the Papadopoulos junta in 1973) and an ardent nationalist reactionary himself.

Things began to become more interesting, however, when the Presidency made public the minutes of Papoulias’ talks with the political leaders. It was revealed that, together with his 7 conditions, Kammenos had delivered to the President a paper referring to the possible governmental scenarios which differed significantly from his official and open proposals.

Kammenos had categorically refused he was taking part in any secret negotiations, insisting that the Independent Greeks are making everything in daylight. This paper clearly exposed his lie, revealing the decay of the political establishment. Kammenos reacted to the publication of the minutes by saying that this paper was not knowingly delivered by him to the President, not denying thus its authenticity but implying it was not official and got accidentally mixed with his 7 point proposals, offering at the same time an alternative explanation that it could had been fabricated. Yet the whole thing exposed him severely and will definitely cost him politically. The immediate result was the cancelation of his private encounter with President Papoulias today, which in effect meant the failure of the right government prospect as well.

It should not be left unmentioned, by the way, that a part of the establishment media, not the mainline ones but those which already support the ultra-right, pressed Kammenos strongly to avoid consenting to any government, on whatever conditions it were to be formed. This includes the right, completely yellow “Extra 3 Chanel” and the notorious populist journalist George Tragas. It seems that these circles, pondering on the lack of cooperation within the left, already consider that a further aggravation of the crisis in the next few months will help in the long run the ultra-right. Kammenos, who enjoyed much of their support, had to appear at Monday night in Tragas’ TV news , to excuse himself clumsily for his vacillations.

KKE leadership hardens its sectarian, adventurist stance

Throughout the whole course of events, KKE retained its ultra-sectarian stance, repeating its position that a left government would be equally harmful to the people as a government of the right. Aleka Papariga, the KKE General Secretary, restated this at a KKE mass gathering held in Athens at the Pedion Areos Square at Monday.

However, A. Papariga’s statements at her Sunday meeting with President Papoulias are the most indicative, allowing everyone to form an idea about the real content of the KKE position, which in fact directly serves the Greek ruling classes. During her discussion with the President, Papariga did not only limit herself to denouncing as a “demagogy” the prospect of a left government. Surpassing anything else the KKE had said until then, she even went so far as to urge for a direct legitimization of Mihaloliakos, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party leader.

During the discussion, President Papoulias, mentioning the former example of the cooperation between KKE and the other left forces in 1989, set Papariga the question: “Didn’t you consider the idea to make a similar coalition?”

Papariga’s answer to that was: “Not now. This is a different phase, another question, another object. It cannot be compared. We are facing now a crisis and a crisis cannot be overcome by funny things”.

Why coalitions can be formed only in good occasions and not in times of crisis and why a coalition with SYRIZA would be by definition “funny” was the secret of the KKE General Secretary, which she did not consider appropriate to reveal to the Greek people.

Sensing the absurdity of her assertions, Papariga went on to recall hypocritically the heroic example of Dimitris Christoulas, the same Christoulas which the KKE scorned when he committed suicide at Syntagma, presenting him as a coward and avoiding mention his message and even his name in “Rizospastis”, the official KKE organ.

“Had we decided, having become crazy – which luckily we are not –”, Papariga declared, “and said such things to the people, that we will form a government and solve their problems, I would prefer – I say – to go like Christoulas, to go to commit suicide at Syntagma with a gun”. The reason she would do that, she explained, is that those who propose such things “are fooling the people” and that “with the people at home waiting for things to be fixed by others” no real change can be made. Why a left government would have people stay at home and not call them to actively take part in the struggle to change things, was again the secret of A. Papariga.

Papariga kept her biggest show however for the end, when the problem of whether Mihaloliakos would take part at the Tuesday political leaders’ council under the President came up. All other leaders, including Samaras of New Democracy and even Kammenos, had excluded that possibility. Papariga surprised the President by stating that she would not only readily accept Mihaloliakos’ participation, but even him standing beside her at the meeting.

She said that she would not like it, of course, but “I cannot say ‘I do not sit [with him]‘. If it becomes necessary, we will all sit together. What can we do?” Papariga mentioned that KKE party members urged her not to take part if Mihaloliakos was called, but declared that she did not consider it her duty to protest, as Tsipras and Kouvelis had already done, because Golden Dawn was voted by the people. If she took such a stance, she added, the result would be “to strengthen them [the neo-Nazis]. You cannot exclude them”.

This Papariga statement was in fact a monument of political naivety and servility to reaction. The Golden Dawn party is largely based on its para-state organization and connections with security forces. It may have gained a success in recent elections, but the big majority of the Greek people are still antifascist, understanding that the neo-Nazi gangs represent a threat to democracy and to their political freedoms. To call for accepting Mihaloliakos at the leaders’ council, as Papariga urged, means in fact to offer Mihaloliakos democratic credit, and help the neo-Nazis gain acceptance from a bigger part of the people.

Papariga not only failed to understand this, but was so naive as to relate to the President the answer she gave to the party members who urged her to avoid Mihaloliakos. “I told them “Well, guys, we will be side by side, if the President puts me near him [i.e. Mihaloliakos] what will I say, that I do not sit?”

To which President Papoulias commented with just one word: “Lovely!”

Papoulias is a former left who had taken part in the National Resistance movement and posed as progressive, before offering his services to the system. He is moreover a clever person. He could not fail therefore to notice the glaring contradiction in Papariga’s position, on the one hand declaring that she will not take part in a left government in order not to betray the people, and on the other hand accepting readily to stand side by side with Mihaloliakos, if the President said so. This was in fact the meaning of his comment.

All this goes to reveal the stance of the KKE leadership as a reactionary stance, which directly aids the system close its holes and even openly helps the ultra-right. Let us mention by the way that Papariga eventually did not take part in the Tuesday council of political leaders, perhaps in protest for not calling Mihaloliakos as well…

The final act

The final act of the present episode of the Greek drama took place at the meeting held before President Papoulias at 2 o’clock today, Tuesday 15th. All leaders of parliamentary parties participated, except, as already mentioned, Mihaloliakos of the Golden Dawn and Papariga of the KKE. The meeting failed to reach an agreement on forming a government, along any of the lines proposed during these last days. This means that the country is heading towards new elections. They will take part in June, being open to a variety of regroupings and results, although a further strengthening of SYRIZA is considered very probable. The former governing parties, together with the Democratic Left will try to blame SYRIZA for the failure to form a government, thus reducing its dynamic; while SYRIZA will counter that it justly refused to become part of the memorandum front. Clearly, strong dilemmas will be put to the people, which means that smaller parties, especially strongly defeated ones like PASOK and, objectively, KKE, will find it difficult to repeat their results of the May 6th elections.

Irrespective of the new elections result, though, it has become patently clear that the Greek crisis is deepening and there is no easy way out. Greece has a long tradition of dictatorships during the 20th century, including those of Pangalos (1925), Metaxas (1936) and the colonels led by Papadopoulos (1967). Comments are appearing already in the foreign press that this might be also the outcome of the present anomaly. However, these comments are made with the obvious aim to terrorize the people and affirm that the only possible way for Greece is prolonging the austerity policies, as many leading European politicians asserted during the last two days. In fact, the ruling classes are not yet ready to impose a dictatorial solution, which is made more difficult by international conditions as well as the radicalization of the Greek people towards the left.

Odds are that during the following months a chance for the formation of a government of the left will appear. This government, the concrete form of which, the parties participating, etc., cannot be foreseen now, will not have an easy task to solve. In the best case, it may help Greece avoid passing the worst part of Argentina’s experience in 2001 and find a way out of this crisis with the least cost by mobilizing the people. But a left government might also come after a bankruptcy and as a result of the country’s passing from a bloody unrest and turmoil. It is the task of responsible radical left forces in Greece to do everything they can to channel things towards the first direction but also be ready for the second.

The establishment of a left government in Greece could be the sign for a broader radicalization in other European countries as well. The fear with which the ruling classes react to this prospect makes clear it is a valid prospect, which may not lead to a direct overthrow of capitalism, but will mean a big step forward.

If however the government of the left fails to materialize or be followed properly, then all kinds of dangers from the ultra-right and the right will become intensified. The future of Greece will darken and the left upsurge in Europe will receive a lesser impetus. In this respect, exposing and defeating the adventurist stance of the KKE leadership is perhaps the most urgent task of the Greek left. For if this stance persists the possibilities of a left government will be drastically reduced or even nullified.

Countering, Democrats will huff that the travails of their dead battery, soft spot, touching turmoil or whatever it is that’s inside their boxer’s shorts or panties is no one’s business, least of all the government, though, of course, the Democrat-appointed Janet Napolitano and her TSA hordes have set up an enduring base next to their exposed, uh, discount toys. Irradiated and propped up by Cialis, they don’t look half bad. Oh yes, they do.

According to Democrats, Obama is a good liberal because he will also send gay men and women worldwide to massacre whoever gets in the way of the oil liberals need to drive their SUVs to anti-war rallies.

According to Republicans, Mitt is a good conservative since he can’t stand Ellen DeGeneres, Johnny Weir, or Barney the Dinosaur, although he will condemn a husband or wife halfway across the globe to commit unspeakable acts for years, while the remaining spouse languishes at home in anxiety and loneliness, to be comforted by some groggy chick at the bar, talk radio, a young cable guy, Jesus, reruns of American Idol or, in the best case scenario, nothing at all.

Republican politicians pretend to cherish the traditional family, while their Democratic counterparts feign that everyone should have a right to a family, but, in fact, neither side cares about anyone’s family, because they are indifferent if not hostile to human connections, period. Propped up by our military-banking complex, both parties support a bankrupting and bankrupted banking system and an endless war policy that destroy families worldwide, including here.

On top of that, they’ve tricked you into being plugged to their various brainwashing machines all day long, so that you’re divorced from your very self, honey. Outside, birds, sunshine and mounds of corpses your tax money murdered, though you wouldn’t know it, because you’re addicted to songs you’ve heard for the billionth time, each, as well as Snookie updates, pixelated pussies, cocks and boxscores.

Outside, a busking violinist says that his life is easier now, since there are so many out-of-business stores he can play in front of, without being shooed away. Outside, a person, male or female, it’s not clear, poses as a horse for tips, as a real horse looks on. Outside, a Vietnam vet drinks mouthwash to get high, while an Iraq vet shows his discharge paper to prove that he is a genuine, disposable piece of fodder, and not just an ordinary panhandler. A pint of Listerine with 21.6% alcohol costs $4.50, compared to a 24 oz., tallboy can of Natural Ice at $1.49, with 5.9 % alcohol, so Listerine is a much, much better value. It’s not exactly Jameson, true, but a few gulps will get you buzzed for maybe five hours. Outside, a man sells Newport cigarettes, “Two for a dollar, two for a dollar. Who’s next? How are you today? Very good to see you. Welcome back, it’s happy Monday. Time to go to work! It’s a beautiful day today, but don’t get used to it. It’s going to rain tomorrow! We all have our own cross to bear, ladies and gentlemen. My, aren’t you lovely today! Yes, you! Welcome back!” If he sells the entire pack in an hour, he will make $3.50. Outside, a man drains a leftover soda fished from a trash can in a well-manicured downtown plaza surrounded by bank skyscrapers.

But inside the screen, and thus inside your mind, all is well, stable and sexy. The recovery is on track, unemployment is steadily going down, and new college graduates are entering an improving job market, with multiple offers even. Inside the screen, what happens in Europe stays in Europe, Detroit is back, California is still the land of milk and honey and, soon enough, we will be amped up by orations of hope, change, forward, believe in America, let America be America and, yes, America can!

In this land of peeling yet persistent illusions, none is more farcical than the Presidential election, for even as it promises renewal, common purpose, focus and hope, and demands a collective soul searching, even, this elaborate and drawn out ritual will deliver nothing more than a new (or renewed) apologist for the same set of crimes against humanity, country and you. If there’s any good to this coming circus, it’s that the empire seems determined to maintain a relative peace until the electoral shenanigans are over. Though it’s itching for new rounds of shock and awesome, y’all, because that’s how it makes its money, it doesn’t want to tip this tottering economy into the mother of all ditches, not when citizens are somewhat focused on how to correct or improve our common lot.

If enough machinists, PhDs and war veterans dumpster dive and share a honey bucket, if whores dally in middle-class suburbs and gas goes to 6 bucks, for example, the country will explode from sea to shining sea, and not just because of well-placed FBI agents. With events quickly spiraling out of control, this election may not go as choreographed, family values be damned.

The two traditional parties, pillars of the neoliberal policies, lost more than half of their previous vote. Combined together, they make now just a 32% of the electorate, in comparison to 77% they had scored in the 2009 elections. New Democracy has dropped from 33% in 2009 to 19%, while PASOK has sunk even more dramatically from 44% to 13%, losing more than 2.000.000 votes. This was the punishment for their reactionary “Memorandum” policies, which they followed in cooperation with the European Union and the IMF. These policies led to a vast impoverishment of the majority of the people and a mass unemployment officially already at 23%, resulting even to a plethora of suicides by desperate men and women.

The vote of the broad left rose from a modest 12% in 2009 to an impressive 35.5% (17% for SYRIZA, 8.5% for KKE, 1.2% for the anticapitalist left party ANTARSYA and some 6.1% for the Democratic Left and 2.9% for the Greens). However the prospect of a left government is made problematic since the KKE (Communist Party of Greece) is an ultra-Stalinist party, denying beforehand any cooperation with “opportunists”, which it considers to be all other left parties except from itself. Moreover, the Democratic Left and the Greens are moderate center-left parties, which do not differ radically from PASOK and have supported until lately a rather conservative agenda. Even so, the collective result of the three radical left parties, SYRIZA, KKE and ANTARSYA, an impressive 26.5%, makes it possible to have some real hope for the future.

The other significant feature of the elections is the abrupt rise of the ultra-right, jumping together to an astonishing 20.5%. Formerly represented by just one party, LAOS, which had scored a modest 6% 3 years ago, the ultra-right now was able to present three major parties, Independent Greeks, LAOS, and the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, which took respectively 10.6%, 2.9% and 7%. LAOS paid for its support of the Papadimos government, holding office during the last months in Greece to implement the austerity programs of the Troika, falling just short from the required 3% to enter the parliament.

However, the shocking 7% achieved by Golden Dawn, an openly neo-Nazi and racist anti-immigrant party, marks perhaps more than anything else the result of the Greek elections. It is the first time such a party not only enters the parliament but gains mass support, which the Nazis lacked during the whole political history of Greece, famous for its resistance movement in 1941-45.

This result had been anticipated by left activists and publicists, between others by our group in Marxist Thought, which devoted its whole last issue to the problem of fascism, neo-fascism, and the new ultra-right. There was a mass mobilization by left organizations during the last three weeks calling the attention of the people to the danger of the neo-Nazi gangs. However, all this proved largely ineffective, as they have gained hold during the last years in degraded neighborhoods and within the unemployed youth. The stance of the Stalinist KKE, which not only is doing absolutely nothing to fight the ultra-right but gives shelter to nationalists like the notorious journalist Liana Kanelli, and even went so far as to welcome the Golden Dawn representatives at the Halyvourgiki strike through the local workers’ union it controls, added largely to the problem.

It is true that the ultra-right gathered together “only” 20.5%, in comparison to the radical left’s 26.5%. However, it is also true that it more than tripled its forces, while the radical left “just” doubled them.

The ensuing situation has been utilized by conservative commentators of the media and the Press, to interpret the result as an illogical expression of anger, pushing to extremes, against the demands of logic and caution. According to this reading, people were carried away by the false promises of demagogues, which are impossible to fulfill. The correct way would have been to foster the reactionary “reforms” that would eventually lead to an overcoming of the crisis through development and higher productivity and an improvement of democracy. Dora Bakogianni, the leader of the ultra neo-liberal (and falsely called so) Democratic Alliance, which failed to enter the Parliament by a narrow margin, has many times argued so in the most clear cut way.

This type of argument has in fact a double purpose. On the one hand, it attempts to equate in a tricky way the ultra-right menace and the prospect of left change as two complementary facets of the problem facing Greece, thus presenting the left as a danger too and denying beforehand there can be any radical positive solution. And on the other hand it seeks to embellish the corrupted Greek parliamentary system and make the parties of the establishment look like a guarantee for stability and improvement, while they are in fact the cause of the problem and of the ultra-right menace too. In Greece, corruption of leading politicians and public officials has been extremely widespread, taking enormous proportions with practically no one of them being ever punished. This decay has been one of the main causes that facilitated the rise of ultra-right and neo-Nazism. Yet, we are urged now to believe that these very forces that produced this situation have the magic clue to lead the country out of the crisis, and this by following the recipes that made it so deep. In fact, when reactionary politicians like Bakogianni are talking about “improving productivity” they only mean more layoffs and a new lowering of wages in the public and private sectors, thus making the existing bad situation even more desperate.

SYRIZA has countered these stereotypes in a successful way, by proposing the formation of a government of the left, which attracted much support from the people. The charismatic personality of its president, Alexis Tsipras, played a part in this too. Other radical left parties like KKE and ANTARSYA failed to make an equivalent impression. The KKE insisted on an ultra-sectarian policy, calling for the establishment of a front for the direct overthrow of the system by a “popular power”, connecting every fight for a bettering of the sad lot of the people with this prospect and denying harshly that anything could be done before establishing the “popular power.” This in fact meant condemning itself to passivity and a bureaucratic break with reality under the deceptive guise of fighting for the revolution, as has so often been the case with Stalinism. ANTARSYA had a much better approach and has played a vital role in the fight against the Golden Dawn neo-Nazis during the last years. Yet it paid for its lack of strong bonds with the people and its inability to cooperate with other left forces. This it failed to do not only with SYRIZA, with which it has a number of programmatic differences, but even with the FSO (Front of Solidarity and Overthrow), a small radical left formation led by Alekos Alavanos, a former eminent SYRIZA leader who broke with SYRIZA and kept largely aside in these elections.

The KKE has been accusing SYRIZA for being opportunistic and spreading illusions to the people by proposing a government of the left, since such a government would be no better than the existing ones. Aleka Papariga, the dogmatist General Secretary of the KKE, has even gone so far as to suggest that taking part in such a government would mean to betray the people for some ministerial “chairs” and state that the KKE would give no vote of confidence to it, should it appear before the Greek Parliament. Their political estimate after the elections was that the rise of support for SYRIZA signifies an attempt by the system to thwart the radicalization of the people and channel it to roads acceptable to the ruling classes. Moreover, Papariga has plainly refused even to meet A. Tsipras who took yesterday the mandate to form a government, after A. Samaras, the New Democracy leader, failed to do so and resigned his mandate.

All this however and the assertion of the KKE leadership that no change at all can be achieved in a parliamentary way is highly sectarian dogmatism. Of course socialism cannot be finally established in a parliamentary way, to achieve that a revolution by the people is needed. Yet the experience of Chavez in Venezuela shows that with the support of a mass movement big radical changes can be initiated using the parliament as a lever, and there is no real reason that this should be in principle impossible for Greece.

Real problems, however, start from this point on. To enforce such a radical change with the help of a left government based on a parliamentary majority, a mass front is needed, which will lend support to the whole project. This is all the more essential in Greece, to be able to withstand the strong pressure by foreign lenders and the European governments and imperialist institutions. However, neither such a majority, nor a front exists presently. And while numbers might make the government of the left abstractly possible at a later stage, it is not at all certain that it will materialize.

The KKE stance is the main problem to that. This party has the support of a significant part of the industrial working class, the fighting elements of which would strengthen and cement the proposed front. However, the KKE, after a break in 1991, has followed for two decades an increasingly Stalinist course. This has gone to the length of not only rehabilitating recently Nikos Zahariadis, the authoritarian and cynical Stalinist General Secretary of the KKE in 1931-56, but also presenting Stalin as one of the greatest of all Marxists, accepting the validity of the Moscow trials and adopting the accusations that Trotsky, Bukharin, and the other Bolshevik leaders were agents of the Gestapo. A number of hard Stalinist pseudo-theorists like politburo members Makis Mailis and Stefanos Loukas have formed a circle directing the party’s inner political and ideological life, thus lowering the level of its members and making it vulnerable to all kinds of careerists and opportunists.

The KKE has repudiated the revolutions of the Arab Spring and the great movements of the “indignados” in Greece and Europe as being suspect and perhaps even guided by organs of the imperialistic secret services, refusing to take part in them. Instead of that it calls the people to unite in party fabricated “fronts” that are directed from above and have little connection with the people. Recently it has gone so far as to ignore the dramatic suicide of Dimitris Christoulas, a 77 year old man who shot himself at Syntagma and left a moving message to the younger generation, urging it to fight against the corrupt rulers. Christoulas was a member of the “indignados” movement and so “Rizospastis,” the official organ of the KKE, in the few lines it devoted to the incident did not even mention his name (calling him “the 77 year old man”) and shamelessly censored his message, reaching even the point off hurling accusations at him that his action was in the interests of the ruling classes, who want the people to commit suicide. Alekos Halvatzis, the son of Spyros Halvatzis, the KKE spokesman in the parliament, left the KKE one or two years ago, accusing the Papariga leadership of having filled the party with “stowaways.”

The SYRIZA is on the other hand a coalition of various groups including Marxists, Trotskyites, Maoists, left and moderate reformists, greens, and a number of other tendencies. The party has a genuinely democratic character and this variety of views lends it liveliness, as a center of discussion and production of ideas. However, in the grave situation facing Greece it could also prove a problem, by preventing at a critical moment a unified stance on crucial questions on which the various components hold different views. For the moment, of course, the electoral success strengthens the unity of the party, but this cannot be sure to hold indefinitely in the future.

The KKE, with its usual fanaticism, seems likely to “bet” on the possibility that a balancing of views will not be possible in SYRIZA and after a probable failure of the attempt to set up a left government or pursue it properly in case it is established, in the not very remote future the Greek people might turn to them. Such a hope can be sustained by the fact that SYRIZA does not have strong bonds with the masses that came over to it in the present elections, and its foothold is not in the working class but mainly in civil servants and the youth. It is a vain hope though in the sense that if SYRIZA fails to cope with the difficulties, chaos will be made universal, and in such a situation the ultra-right and not the KKE will be the one most likely to benefit.

The SYRIZA victory has coincided with the victory of Francois Hollande in France. Yet, it should be made clear, these are two events of an entirely different character. Hollande’s success, even if he has gained the support of many left voters, signifies just a shift of policy within the ruling classes and its parties. It may lead to some partial changes and adjustments, a somewhat different tone and orientation, but it will leave the general foundations of European policies untouched. The turn to SYRIZA in Greece however has a potential to challenge the very foundations of the austerity policies and the domination of the markets. It may serve as an example, especially if it is successful, for other countries facing similar problems, like Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland, and instigate a general and real European movement to the left.

The ruling European elites, as represented by Merkel, Schäuble, Barroso, etc, are fully conscious of this and have reacted nervously, either by intervening shamelessly before the elections to dictate the result, or by simply stating that the country’s obligations, signed by the previous government, must be fulfilled. Their fears are certainly justified, especially in the case that a broader movement to the radical left takes place in Europe. However the really urgent question is: how will SYRIZA cope with their intensified pressure during the following months and what it will strive and be able to achieve at a moment the reactionary forces still remain stronger in Europe as a whole?

SYRIZA’s program aims at a denouncement of the “Memorandum” and a re-negotiation of debt, which will include cancelling a large part of it as odious. It also claims a 3-year period of suspension of debt obligations, which would be an important relief step, if achieved. SYRIZA aims at nationalizing a number of banks, heavier taxation of the rich and improving the situation of the people, to a restoration of their former living standards. After having received the mandate, Tsipras proposed a 5-point program which is a concretization of this.

Other left forces like ANTARSYA argue, however, that this is not enough and that a unilateral repudiation of debt will be needed, which will mean that the country will have to leave the Euro zone and return to its national currency. This position is largely held also by the Left Current, a significant component of SYRIZA headed by its parliamentary spokesman Panagiotis Lafazanis, while a number of influential Greek economists, like Kostas Lapavitsas, have also argued this way. Significantly, the KKE connects the cancelation of debt too with the “popular power” slogan, considering it to be impossible under parliamentary conditions. This, of course, is an absurdity since the repudiation of debt is a reform that concerns the system of distribution leaving untouched the capitalist system of production as such. Thus it is perfectly conceivable under capitalism, as a number of examples show (Ecuador, Russia, etc.).

The difficulty with the unilateral repudiation of debt is that, although being in the long run most beneficial to the people, it will cause in its initial stages significant problems and disorganization. To minimize this and avoid an experience like that of Argentina in 2001, it is essential that the majority of the people are convinced for its necessity and it is pursued in an ordered way by a left government that is determined and conscious of its aims. This means that while the European left is still on the defensive, the attempt to implement the “compromising” program of SYRIZA and reach an agreement with the EU should be made. If, as it is quite possible, the neoliberal EU elites refuse to make any real and significant concessions, then this could convince the Greek people for the necessity of more radical steps. Prospectively, it will be ideal if this course coincides will a general revival of mass movements in Europe, especially in Europe’s south, leading to a “European Spring,” like the Arab one.

This prospect is not so remote as it may seem. The ruling classes in Greece and Europe are taking it seriously and making preparations to face the challenge it will pose to their system. The recent rise of the ultra-right in Greece, openly supported by a part of the media, capitalist circles, and the state security machine, is a part of this.

The breakup of the Greek political system has been compared in this respect with the downfall of the Weimar Republic and it is true that there is a number of striking analogies. Under a similar situation of deep economic crisis, mass unemployment, and poverty, we attend the bankruptcy not only of the formerly leading political parties but of the parliamentary system as well. The Papadimos government was important in this regard, as it signified a first step away from normal democratic government, towards technocratic-bureaucratic administration, reminiscent in many ways of the Brüning government in Weimar. The program of the newly created Independent Greeks party, headed by Panos Kammenos (a former New Democracy minister), contains a number of even more dangerous reactionary points, combining an ultra-privatization plan with proposals of appointing the chiefs of police and the army ministers of security and national defense respectively. This is clearly a Bonapartist plan, which would open up a threat to the very foundations of bourgeois democracy and of the labor movement. For the time being, such measures are supported only by the Kammenos party and those even more to the right (LAOS, Golden Dawn). It is not to be excluded that as the crisis intensifies, the more traditional parties, PASOK and New Democracy, or at least certain groups within them, might turn to similar directions.

The May 6th elections had the important consequence of producing a stalemate, not allowing the formation of any viable government. PASOK and New Democracy together have 149 seats, which do not give the needed parliamentary majority of 151. But even if they possessed this, forming a government would be out of question since it would be weak and without authority. This excludes also the possibility of a government being formed by these two parties together the Democratic Left, which would indeed possess a majority of 168 seats. Democratic Left has wisely excluded this possibility, as it would mean to identify itself with the two formerly big parties which were condemned by the people. The broad left on the other hand cannot form a majority, even if we count together all its disunited components. The possibility of forming a “national government” supported by a broad spectrum of forces except the ultra right, as proposed by PASOK and New Democracy leaders, is also excluded since it would simply mean to involve the left in the memorandum policies.

Greece is heading therefore almost inevitably to new elections, which will take place somewhere in the middle of June. These new elections have the potential to provoke a further impressive restructuring of the political scene.

SYRIZA’s tactics will be to unite around it the other left forces, which failed to enter the parliament (KKE of course has declared it is against unity under all conditions). That includes not only the Greens and ANTARSYA, but possibly some other groups that broke from PASOK like the small (and farily conservative) “Social Agreement” party. SYRIZA may also draw votes from KKE and improve its performance in the agrarian areas, which voted more conservative than the big cities (SYRIZA got more than 20% of the vote in Athens but much less in the countryside). If all this materializes, SYRIZA will almost certainly come first and take advantage of the 50 seats bonus the illogical electoral law grants the first party. This could augment its parliamentary force from 52 seats now to some 120, facilitating greatly the formation of a left government.

However, the ruling class parties have some prospects of countering this. The New Democracy party might be able to unite with the two small ultra-neoliberal parties, Bakogianni’s Democratic Alliance and Action of Stefanos Manos (a Greek big capitalist), which gathered together a respectable 5% of the electorate. Should such a regrouping be achieved, then first place in the coming elections will be a very open issue. However, A. Samaras, the New Democracy leader, is not in good terms with the leaders of the other two parties, so it will be rather difficult to happen (although the New Democracy leader has already made the proposal). Alternatively, it is quite possible that the two ultra-neoliberal parties will make a joint appearance, but this, while ensuring their representation in the new parliament, would not stop SYRIZA from coming first.

There is also a possibility of mass desertions of New Democracy and PASOK voters towards the “Independent Greeks” party, which poses as a patriotic and popular right, defending the interests of the people. This might take big proportions if certain sections of the ruling classes and media, who still supported the traditional parties, decide to move towards Kammenos as their only viable representative. However, there is a 7% difference in favor of SYRIZA now, so this movement would have to be very pronounced to enable the Independent Greeks to take the lead. A convergence between the Independent Greeks and Golden Dawn is not very likely since the Independent Greeks leadership takes pains to dissociate itself from Nazism. It will be very interesting though to see what will be the result of Golden Dawn in these new elections.

One thing is certain. After the next elections, the hour of truth will come for Greece. It will also be the hour of truth for the Greek radical left. Developments will show if it is able to unite, withstand the enormous pressures the EU authorities will apply and open up a new progressive way for Greece and a window of hope for the rest of Europe.

Update

Developments are running fast here in Greece, so that the situation changes abruptly and forecasts may prove wrong or inexact in just a few hours.

After E. Venizelos, the PASOK leader, took the mandate from President Papoulias this day, he had a meeting with Fotis Kouvelis, the leader of the Democratic Left. In it, there was a proposal by Kouvelis of forming an “Ecumenical government” of so-called limited purpose, which will supposedly renegotiate the Memorandum and hold office until the 2014 European parliament elections. Venizelos reacted positively to that, saying that it practically coincides with PASOK’s proposal for a government of “National salvation.”
So it seems that for the first time there is a real prospect of a government being formed after the stalemate of the last days.

This government will in fact be the New Democracy-PASOK-Democratic Left government, which Kouvelis himself had excluded just a few days ago. SYRIZA almost certainly will not take part in it, as will also be the case with the other parties represented in the Greek parliament. However, for obvious reasons of legitimization, the three parties will try to make it appear as something different, perhaps by appointing Kouvelis as Prime Minister and limiting or even wholly avoiding the participation of PASOK and New Democracy.
If this prospect materializes, it will be a flagrant violation of the will of the people, as expressed in the elections. Its real aim will be to continue the Memorandum policies, albeit in a slightly different manner, by extracting a few rather insignificant concessions from the European Union and make it appear as a great achievement. It will also signify a further step towards political anomaly, as it will be based mainly in the two formerly ruling parties condemned for their policies and will represent just 37% of the total vote.

Alexis Tsipras has justly called this plan an attempt by PASOK and New Democracy to find a “left Karatzaferis” – comparing thus Kouvelis with Giorgos Karatzaferis, the leader of the ultra-right LAOS, who had supported, with PASOK and New Democracy, the former Papadimos government, his party failing to enter the new parliament for that reason. The plan to establish such a government shows how horrified the ruling circles are from the prospect of a new election which might give a clear victory to SYRIZA and the left (some polls having already shown an increase of the support for SYRIZA after the election to the level of 25%). It is also a sign of how much the European Union governments and institutions are worried from the prospect of a left government in Greece and strongly press behind the scene for this kind of solution.

It remains to be seen if during the meeting of the Political Leaders with President Papoulias, which the constitution provides for as an attempt to form a government when the circle of mandates ends, it will become possible to reach this solution. The meeting will take place at most after 3 days, if Venizelos exhausts the duration of his mandate. Even if it is established, however, such a government will be patently weak and will not have any real prospect of solving the grave problems of Greece. It is doubtful therefore – although not impossible – if the three parties will take the risk of appointing it and coming to a total failure which will be blamed upon them after a few months.

Former politicians and intelligence bosses have been challenging the conventional wisdom of right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu through a series of charged statements and political rhetoric.

A few weeks ago it sounded rather like a political fluke when former chief of the Israeli Mossad, Meir Dagan called an attack on Iran “the stupidest thing I have ever heard.” His comment was then widely dismissed, but other voices have since joined the discussion.  Yuval Diskin, former head of the Israeli internal intelligence, the Shin Bet, went even further, as he questioned the abilities of both Netanyahu and Barak, accusing them of promoting ‘messianic sentiments’ regarding Iran.

“I saw them up close, they are not Messiahs… These are not people whose hands I would like to have on the steering- wheel,” he said. Dagan, who remains insistent on the ‘stupidity’ of the Israeli government, came to Diskin’s support. He told the New York Times on April 29 that “Diskin is a very serious man, a very talented man, he has a lot of experience in countering terrorism.”

Netanyahu’s exaggeration of the supposed ‘existential danger’ posed by Iran’s nuclear program is clearly political – ultimately aimed at weakening another regional foe and appeasing his hard-line coalition. The invoking of holocaust analogies over a ‘threat’ that various international agencies have disputed, is a clear sign of the government’s political and moral bankruptcy.

Awareness of Netanyahu’s ineptness is not confined to former heads of Israel’s intelligence, but the military itself. In a highly publicized interview in Haaretz in April, Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz disputed the government’s conventional wisdom – both by attesting to the rationality of Iranians leaders and discounting the very claim that Iran is on the road to manufacturing nuclear weapons. “Iran is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn’t yet decided whether to go the extra mile,” he said.

The timing of this stream of focused criticism, emanating from some of Israel’s most decorated intelligence and army men, is not coincidental. Yes, there may be a major political upheaval underway regarding Iran, but considering the fact that Netanyahu still possesses the upper hand in Israeli politics, one must neither delve too far into optimism nor subsist in perpetual cynicism.

In ‘Changing Course in Israel’ (Gulf News, May 4), Patrick Seale wrote:

The challenge to Netanyahu could have far-reaching consequences. For one thing, it appears to have removed any likelihood of an early Israeli attack on Iran, such as Netanyahu has threatened and trumpeted for a year and more; for another, it has revived the possibility of a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a solution many had thought moribund, if not actually dead.

It is difficult to ascertain whether the threat of war against Iran has been ‘removed’ based on statements made during an election season in Israel. Israeli politics is particularly known for its underhandedness, and parties vying for power understand that focusing their attack on Netanyahu is the only way to reinforce their candidate’s chances in the upcoming elections. This is not the first time that former heads of Israel’s intelligence and military have adopted such a charged position against a standing prime minister.

Yet, regardless of the motive, the move against Netanyahu may be backfiring. According to a recent Haaretz poll, Netanyahu is ‘the clear favorite heading into Israel’s upcoming elections.’ Yossi Verter wrote on May 5:

Netanyahu can rest easy after reading the results of the latest Haaretz-Dialog poll: Not only does he trounce all his rivals on the question of who is most fit to lead the country, but an absolute majority of Israelis reject the aspersions cast on him last week by former Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin.

The poll indicates that the clearly coordinated statements regarding Iran are yet to shake Netanyahu’s throne. That said, such criticism could represent the start of political friction around Iran’s war. The friction could either move the next government further to the right or to the center. Until the nature of the next Israeli political formation becomes clearer, German commentator Ludwig Watzal is maybe closest to the right assessment. “The power struggle between Israel’s security establishments should tell the international public that an attack on Iran’s civilian nuclear program would be highly dangerous and politically irresponsible,” he wrote.

Iran aside, what about other major maneuvers in Israeli politics preceding the probable elections a few months from now? [Ramzy Baroud to DV Editor: "The article was written couple of days before Netanyahu's call for early elections was cancelled, and replaced with a coalition with Kadima. My reference to 'few months from now' were based on Netanyahu's own call for early elections, which were expected to take place anytime between August and October. So that bit is outdated."]

Tzipi Livni, former head of Israel’s biggest opposition party, Kadima, has left the Knesset with a bang, although her resignation had been anticipated following her major defeat by challenger Shaul Mofaz in primary party elections last March. Once more, Livni assigned herself the role of the visionary, warning that Israel was sitting ‘on a volcano’. “The international clock is ticking and the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state is in danger,” she suggested.

Livni may have left the Knesset, but she has not left ‘political life.’ That declaration was enticing to the media which began speculating on what role Livni now sees for herself. According to the Haaretz poll, Mofaz, who defeated Livni, enjoys a minuscule approval rating of 6 percent.

The frenzy of statements and political realignments preceding Israel’s elections are typical, and should not indicate major shifts in policies. Mistaking all of this to signal the return of the two state options is too hopeful, to say at least.

The fact remains that Israel is unlikely to shift its aggressive policies from within. What is being promoted as the moral awakening, or political sensibility of some influential Israelis might merely be political maneuvers aimed at helping Israel find an exit strategy from delving further into war rhetoric. It could also be an attempt to challenge Netanyahu’s stronghold on Israeli politics. Quarreling within the ruling class in Israel during an election is almost a requirement. It neither ushers a new era of peace, nor does it signal a serious change from the constant saber-rattling against Iran.

The answer, even though they see over and over again that austerity leads to collapse of the economy, the answer over and over [from politicians] is more austerity.

— Joseph Stiglitz, Asian Financial Forum, January 17, 2012

It has been a busy weekend. France finds itself with a new president, its first socialist leader since François Mitterand left office in 1995. Greek voters flocked to the parties of the anti-bailout movement with indignant enthusiasm. The liberals seem to be holding on, narrowly, in Serbia.

The true effigy in burning after the elections is austerity itself, a doctrine that has assumed the form of biblical doctrine in the hands of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Sarkozy was its co-progenitor, though his failings were far more profound than his dalliance with the German leader.

And that doctrine has shown itself to be flawed. Le Monde (May 4), prior to the election on Sunday, suggested that embracing austerity was dangerous and poisonous, the sure guarantee of electoral suicide. The mood in Europe was changing towards those “drastic cuts in state expenditures, raising taxes, reforming the labour market and so on. More growth will bring higher tax revenues that are necessary to service the public debt.”

Whether François Hollande actually makes the difference is questionable. Sarkozy, for one, can hardly be said to have suffered a comprehensive defeat. The National Front candidate Marine Le Pen refused to endorse either two of the frontrunners. Hollande was in the end fortunate that the centrist François Bayrou endorsed him on Friday. Promises have been made to raise taxes with an acknowledgment that economic growth is essential.

The austerity doctrine took its predictable hammering in the Greek elections, with both New Democracy and the main socialist party Pasok getting respective pastings. Austerity has been made a condition of EU-IMF assistance, not to mention the country remaining in the eurozone. The voters felt otherwise. Yiorgos Vrassidis, a voter who directed his ballot to Syriza, the grouping of the Radical Left, made his intentions clear: “The politicians who got us in to this mess continue to mock us. Neither of them will do anything, all they are interested in is pulling the wool over our eyes so they can get into power again”. (Guardian, May 6). The bailout has been termed everything from being “barbaric” to a constituted “economic Fourth Reich”.

Alex Tsipras, Syriza’s leader, has vowed to do something that will shake Brussels to the core – suspend the servicing of Greece’s debt altogether and add a ‘pro-growth’ clause to the repayment arrangements. But the options presented to voters, according to the Greek left-liberal newspaper To Vima (May 4) have merely suggested that the country’s politicians have run out of ideas. Lies are in ample supply, even if the money is not. “The only thing they don’t talk about is reality”. Greece has two options: abide by the wishes of the creditors (the austerity credo), which will reduce it to a rump state economically on par with Romania or Bulgaria; or abandon the program altogether, which would lead to “an even greater shock”. The German magazine Der Spiegel (May 6) is steadfast in its glumness. “It’s clear that there is no alternative to austerity.”

There is little need to speculate too much about where things will go with such notions as the fiscal pact Merkel has endorsed, or the technocratic gospel that holds sway over budgets. The tight pocket is not necessarily the most feasible one and constrained spending has shown itself to be disastrous. The institutional arrangements for the euro, for one, were not sound to begin with, and fracturing is inevitable. Cutting something that is shrinking has the tag of suicide written all over it, but it is a suicide that European governments have been propelled towards for some time now.

The electoral reality has shown that austerity has been willed a slow death, but so have the victors who have profited from voter dissatisfaction. They are only bound to disappoint. As the Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz notes, “Politics is at the root of the problem”.

A.J. Segneri: Provide for the readers your background in politics and activism, plus on ballot access.

Phil Huckelberry: I’ve been involved in the Green Party since 2000.  I was Co-Chair of the Green National Committee from 2007-2009, and I’ve been Chair of the Illinois Green Party since 2008, in addition to a bunch of other committee hats.

The national party established a separate Ballot Access Committee in 2005 and I’ve been one of the two co-chairs of that since its inception.  In that role I’ve also been the Green Party’s member on the board of the Coalition for Free and Open Elections, Richard Winger’s ballot access rights organization.

AJS: Could you explain what ballot access is, and why this is important for political parties, particularly important for third parties?

PH: Ballot access generally refers to the ability to place a candidate on an official election ballot.  It is usually thought of in terms of a party’s ability to run candidates for public office. If a party does not have ballot access in a particular state, that means that it cannot field candidates for office in that state.

Ballot access laws are almost entirely state creations.  There are almost no relevant federal laws, and there usually aren’t relevant local laws either.  The rules vary widely from state to state.  In Mississippi, if you declare you have a party, the state says, okay, you’re a party, and then you can run candidates. In  North Carolina, you have to collect about 95,000 valid signatures from registered voters.  For reference, the Libertarians did this for the 2008 election, but it cost them $200,000 to do it.

There is also a distinction between securing and holding ballot access.  ”Securing” means getting ballot access initially, which usually requires collecting petition signatures.  ”Holding” means that a party in a given state can maintain their ballot access from one election to the next, which usually means that a candidate of the party got a high enough percentage of the vote.  In some states, securing and/or holding are based on partisan registration numbers.

If a party doesn’t have ballot access, it can’t run candidates.  If a party can’t run candidates, it’s essentially not a party at all, just a political club.  Third parties often refer to fighting to achieve lofty ballot access hurdles as a struggle for their very existence. One other point which should be stressed: it is very common for a state-level party to expend more energy just to get on to the ballot than they expend on behalf of their candidates once they’re on the ballot.  It can be such grueling, exhaustive work just to come into legal existence that it will burn out volunteers months before Election Day.

AJS: What is the current status for ballot access for the Green Party?

PH: As of today, we have presidential ballot access in 21 states.  For the beginning of May, that’s actually pretty good. In a lot of states, ballot access is lost and regained with each election cycle, so you wouldn’t expect to be much higher than 20 at this point in the year.

The best the Green Party ever did was 44 ballot lines in 2000.  Our goal is to reach 45 or more line this year.  It takes better advance planning, and it takes the party understanding that you can’t backload all of the work.  It remains to be seen if the party has gotten the memo on this.

AJS: There are law restrictions for third parties to run for office. From your experience, have these laws increased over time or are these laws just reactionary when specific third parties do well in their respective state?

PH: In the late 19th century these kinds of restrictions didn’t really exist at all, so if you look at the big picture, the laws have only gotten worse over time.  One of the ironies is that these laws only started to come into existence in parallel with the emergence of the partisan primary, a Progressive Era reform designed to mitigate the control of the old political machines.  As the primaries emerged, it created a perceived need to define who could or couldn’t have a primary, and so by extension, who would or wouldn’t be legally considered a party.

If you just look across the last decade, you’ll find a mixed bag.  Here in Illinois, the requirements just keep getting worse.  The state is under the firm control of a machine kingpin named Michael Madigan, who has been Speaker of the House for 28 of the last 30 years.  A lot of the changes have been subtle but when there are already absurdly difficult laws on the books, each small change can have a multiplicative effect.

In some states, it’s gotten easier.  Part of this, I think, is just cyclical, and does have to do with the relative strength of third parties in those areas.  Part of it just seems to be random. Often it just takes one person ascending to a role of prominence in the state legislature to generate a lot of legislation which could be good or bad for ballot access.

But on the whole the situation is worse, because of the emergence of the so-called “Top Two” system, which is now in place in Washington and California.  ”Top Two” has been presented as a “reform” which will supposedly tend to lead to more “moderate” candidates on the general election ballot.  In reality “Top Two” is a ploy on the part of moneyed interests to further control the ballot.

Instead of partisan primaries followed by a general election, all candidates are lumped together on a single primary ballot, and the two candidates with the highest vote totals advance to the general election.  A lot of people have been duped by this because they’ve wanted a “blanket primary” where they can vote for whomever they want, but the effective – and intended – result of “Top Two” is to make it so that the most heavily bankrolled candidates have an even bigger primary advantage.

One intention side effect of “Top Two” is that third party candidates almost never make it onto the general election ballot.  It’s telling that even the Democratic and Republican Parties in Washington and California opposed “Top Two”.  Money is so out of control in politics that the state-level corporate parties are often more democratic in their processes than processes which just rely on who can bring in the most money.

AJS: If you were the head of a board of elections, what ideal things would you implement in order to make ballot access more fair for candidates?

PH: A lot of the elections agencies have little control over the laws. That said, what I’d like to see from election agencies all across the country is a dedication to extreme transparency in how they do their jobs.  If you look at the websites of various state election agencies, some have excellent information about what it takes to run for office, and some provide almost no useful information at all.  It shouldn’t be so hard to run for office, and even in a state with draconian laws, elections agencies should be striving to make information as simple and accessible as possible.

AJS:  Do you think there are individuals in the two major parties that are really out to get third parties and independent candidates, or is that more paranoia?

PH: The corporate duopoly by its very nature is out to get third parties and independent candidates.  I don’t think it’s personal most of the time, or at least it’s no more personal than politics would generally be.

2012 is a redistricting year, and Illinois is a prime example of the politics of redistricting.  Illinois lost one congressional seat (from 19 to 18).  In theory this would mean that two incumbents would have to run against one another.  But in practice, the Democrats who control Springfield created a map where every Democratic incumbent was given a safe district, four Republican incumbents were thrown into two districts so two of them would for sure be knocked out in the primary, and a district got invented out of thin air with no incumbent, designed for a new Democrat to take over.  Even two Green Party candidates who ran for Congress in 2010 were drawn four blocks or less outside of their old districts.

Modern politics is largely about eliminating competition.  The Powers That Be in state legislatures are not much different from the robber barons of 110-120 years ago.  Not only do incumbents want to stay incumbents, they don’t even want to have to run against anyone.  They don’t want to have to show up for political forums and be asked tough questions.  A lot of these people have no sense of responsibility to their constituents – they just see their positions as jobs that they were given through friends or family.

AJS:  What have been the more interesting experiences you have had when working with a specific state to get Greens on the ballot?

PH: One of the more puzzling challenges we’ve encountered is that of it being really hard for a state party to get on the ballot, but once they do, it’s astonishingly easy for a random individual to declare themselves to be a Green and become a candidate of the party, even for high-level office.

In 2008, we had an individual widely known to be a neo-Nazi try and run for Congress as a Green.  We had to file an objection against his nominating petitions to get him thrown off the ballot.  He came back around in 2010, and filed in a district he didn’t even live in, and we had to file another objection. The  party had no real say in these situations.  The objections were based on the paperwork, not on the individual not being an actual Green.  Since these were offices where we otherwise hadn’t intended to field candidates, if he had gotten on the ballot, he would have de facto won the primaries, and it could have been extremely embarrassing for us.

One problem which has plagued state Green Parties for a long time is that they become real political parties with legal rights and privileges, but their leadership still thinks primarily in terms of the party being identified by its position on political issues.  In the eyes of most voters, a party is defined by its candidates, not by whatever lengthy platform document it may be able to offer. This means in turn that a state party needs to have people with administrative and legal prowess in particular positions, to help make sure that the party is staying compliant with various legal requirements, and to help make sure that candidates who can properly represent the party get assistance with getting on the ballot, while candidates who have nothing to do with the party don’t get such assistance. For a party like ours, where a lot of people who come to us have an inherent distrust of power, and who often aren’t very good at administrative matters, it can be that much harder to deal with state laws and administrative policies.

AJS: Where can someone learn more about ballot access?

PH: The national Green Party is tracking 2012 presidential ballot access at Green Party of the United States 2012 Presidential Campaign 

Richard Winger maintains an invaluable blog called Ballot Access News:

This is largely because the ultra-right and its antics are alienating a sector of voters who otherwise may have tilted toward the Republicans and will bring to the polls those 2008 Obama supporters who may have stayed home because of disenchantment with the White House record.

Recognizing the conservatives and their Tea Party vanguard have gone too far in openly subverting the needs and security of the American people, Obama has decided to veil his center right political record with progressive populist rhetoric for the remainder of the campaign. He even articulates some Occupy themes — a smart if not entirely convincing stance.

Perhaps the main ingredient in any possible Democratic presidential victory is the labor movement. Without it, Obama’s chances plummet. AFL-CIO, Change to Win and a few independent unions are supplying Democratic candidates with over $400 million this year. Of equal importance, organized labor wants to field an estimated 400,000 campaign workers as well.

For the first time, union members can now ring doorbells in non-union households, which will allow volunteers to reach unprecedented numbers of people. This is one of the only positive aspects of the conservative Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowing unlimited campaign contributions.

The corporations and Wall Street will provide the Democrats with more money, but they simply cannot field a fraction of labor’s campaign supporters in the streets and on the phones. At the same time, as we shall discuss in Part 2, the unions not only seek Obama’s reelection but several of them have an equal interest in reaching out independently and joining with social movements in the fight against the 1%. Many of the issues brought up by the Occupy forces and others are long time union issues as well, and the labor movement needs allies.

Of course, all the Democratic constituencies will have to turn out in full force at the polls as well. In addition to union members, this includes African Americans and Latinos, women, younger voters, college graduates, and a not insignificant sector of the 1% campaign funders.

It’s ironic that during Obama’s first term, with Democrats controlling the House and Senate for two years and then the Senate during the last two, the White House has done little for its main supporters, except those of the power elite. The black community, Obama’s most loyal supporters, was completely neglected despite its desperate economic circumstances and high unemployment. Considerable numbers of younger voters, and others as well, of course, were disillusioned by the contradiction between the president’s strong election promises of “change” and  his weak performance in office.

Many union leaders and members are extremely disappointed by the candidate they worked so hard to elect in 2008. Labor was not only ignored since then; aside from occasional tokens of Democratic support it was actually set back several times during the Obama years.

But when the AFL-CIO General Board voted unanimously to endorse President Obama for re-election March 13, its only reference to the casting aside of workers’ interests was one paragraph in a declaration of over-the-top support for the Democrats. It read:

Although the labor movement has sometimes differed with the president and often pushed his administration to do more — and do it faster — we have never doubted his commitment to a strong future for working families. With our endorsement today, we affirm our faith in the president. We pledge to work with him through the election and his second term to restore fairness, security and shared prosperity.

What followed was a series of statements and documents virtually lauding every decision the president made since taking office in January 2009, singling out three for special mention:

• He took America from the brink of a second Great Depression by pressing Congress to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which saved or created 3.6 million jobs.

• He championed comprehensive health insurance reform, which — while far from perfect —set the nation on a path toward the health security that had eluded our country for nearly 100 years.

• He insisted upon Wall Street reform — passed over the objection of almost every Republican. Now, we can finally begin to reverse decades of financial deregulation that put our entire economy at risk.

Many labor leaders saw through this, of course. but they are uniting behind Obama to keep the Republicans out of the White House and perhaps make inroads in the right wing-dominated House as well. The destruction of the union movement, after all, is a main objective of the Republican Party.

The unions are much weaker than in past decades. Membership today is down to 11.8%, compared to 35% in 1954. But they remain a huge organization and votes Democratic. The NewYork Times pointed out recently that in 2008 “white blue-collar men voted for John McCain over Mr. Obama by an 18-point margin, but, in large part because of unions’ politicking, white blue-collar men in unions backed Mr. Obama by a 23-point margin.”

Despite the enthusiastic statement of support, the labor movement has been complaining for well over a year, often in public. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka repeatedly suggested last year that labor wasn’t getting its due and that the unions should seriously consider taking a more independent stance toward the Democrats.

It was expected the key union leaders would silence dissent during the election year, but they have been unable to mask their irritation as the Obama Administration has taken one anti-union step after another in recent weeks and months.

For example, the JOBS bill, passed in mid-April by Congress and signed with enthusiasm by President Obama, doesn’t create jobs. The acronym stands for “Jumpstart Our Business Start- Ups Act,” and it’s a gift to one constituency — the wealthy contributors of Silicon Valley’s tech industry — at the expense of another, the labor movement. The legislation was the creature of  Obama’s corporate-controlled Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.  The bill will greatly benefit big business and Wall St.

Trumka, one of the two labor members of the 24-person blue ribbon 1% panel, thundered:

We are disappointed — and angry — that despite warnings from current and former financial markets regulators, law professors, institutional investors and consumer advocates, 73 senators voted for the cynically named ‘JOBS Act’…. This is a vote against investors in the real economy and for Wall Street speculators. When the next bubble bursts, Americans will know who to blame.

And then there’s the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which was engineered in April by President Obama in Colombia and will go into effect May 15. Obama characterized what has been called a “little NAFTA” as a “win-win” for both countries and an expression of support for the besieged Colombian labor movement.  More union organizers have been murdered in Colombia than anywhere else in the world. Two dozen were killed last year alone.

United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard denounced the agreement, charging that it allows the Colombian government to continue “its shameful distinction as the most dangerous country in the world to be a trade unionist.” He suggested Obama’s guarantee about enhanced safety for Colombian union organizers was mistaken. Trumka called the compact “deeply disappointing and troubling.”

Leaders of the Colombian labor movement joined Trumka in this statement:

The underlying trade agreement perpetuates a destructive economic model that expands the rights and privileges of big business and multinational corporations at the expense of workers, consumers, and the environment. The agreement uses a model that has historically benefited a small minority of business interests, while leaving workers, families, and communities behind.

This is just the latest. In February Congress and Obama approved a bill funding the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) over union objections. The legislation also weakened bargaining rights for workers in the aviation and rail industries by increasing from 35% to 50% the number of worker signatures required to allow an election for union recognition. It wasn’t even necessary to pass the measure at all. FAA re-authorization has been extended for the last four years by temporary funding, and could have been continued until the labor restrictions were excised.  Labor howled again, to no avail as usual.

In fact, Obama has reneged on nearly all his 2008 campaign promises to the unions, such as his pledge to fight for the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would have removed onerous limitations on labor organizing going back many decades. Trade unions have been fighting unsuccessfully for relief the whole time.

The White House also didn’t act on labor’s call for the administration to create 25 million full-time jobs. Obama ignored a promise to hike the federal minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2011. He didn’t, as he vowed, renegotiate NAFTA. He strengthened the Patriot Act after insisting in 2008 that he would get rid of it. He didn’t fight for safety and health standards for workers. The White House supports cutbacks in postal services that are strongly opposed by labor.

The list of Democratic dismissals of labor’s priorities — to placate the right wing and satisfy Wall St., corporate and wealthy backers — contains many more examples. And as far as the AFL-CIO’s three favorite Obama moves are concerned — jobs, health insurance and Wall St. reform — they stand as their own refutation. Each of these “victories” was worked out and compromised beforehand in negotiations with insurance companies, corporations and the financial industry.

This is only part of the story. Several key unions are beginning to engage independently with various movements for social change, mainly on economic issues. Labor is hardly united on this matter, but it’s a development worth watching.

Although Nader claims that his backing falls short of a formal endorsement, the Anderson campaign isn’t echoing that semantic hair splitting. After the joint appearance, Rocky Anderson’s Facebook page was updated as follows: “At a press conference in Portland, Oregon today, Ralph Nader officially endorsed Rocky Anderson! It’s been a great day so far, now with everyone’s help let’s raise 10k in just 1 day! We can do it!”

Nader has earned equal measures of adulation (among some radicals) and scorn (among most Democrats) for his unsparing dissections of the hypocrisies and pretensions of liberals and pseudoprogressives of various stripes (Nader, for example, was far more prescient and pointed in his critiques of Obama in 2008 than almost anyone else on the media radar). So one wonders why Nader has spurned the more overtly and unabashedly progressive candidacy of Jill Stein, the likely Green Party presidential nominee, to cast his lot with the shadowy, equivocal campaign of Anderson, a long-time Democratic Party/center-left pol who expressly abjures any identification with the left and who, as recently as 2002-2003, exchanged lavish expressions of praise and political support with Mitt Romney.

An on-line tour of the announced positions of Anderson, as stated on his campaign website, yields some intriguing anomalies. For example: on climate change, Nader and others on the left—including Jill Stein and NASA’s James Hansen—favor some form of carbon tax as a major step toward achieving sharp, rapid reductions in CO₂ emissions. Anderson, by contrast, favors “a market-based approach (i.e., cap and trade) to reducing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions,” a proposal that has been widely ridiculed by climate activists as nothing more than another speculative tinker-toy for Wall Street. As Nader told the New York Times, “I mean, it’s not going to work. It’s too complex. It’s too easily manipulated politically.” Hansen’s assessment is even blunter: “Cap and trade does little to slow global warming or reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. It merely allows polluters and Wall Street traders to fleece the public out of billions of dollars.”

On a host of other issues, Anderson lists noticeably to the right of Nader, despite praiseworthy planks such as raising the minimum wage to ten dollars per hour and slashing the Pentagon budget by 50 percent. On health care, while acknowledging the virtues of single-payer, Anderson also touts a variety of European multi-payer schemes that retain a role for private insurers. He does not expressly call for an outright repeal of WTO/NAFTA, the Patriot Act, or Taft-Hartley, demands that Nader has advanced prominently in all his campaigns. Nor does the solutions section of his website feature the specific demand for full public financing of elections, another of Nader’s key issues, (although Anderson has mentioned the idea in passing in a blog interview). Moreover, Anderson echoes the ideologues of the right in calling for a “balanced budget (or a surplus) except in times of war or major recession”—clearly a calculated appeal to conservative voters. Jill Stein, by contrast, converges with Nader on all the foregoing issues. And on it goes: the Anderson website’s “solutions” pages ladle on a thick glaze of leftish rhetoric that cannot conceal a paucity of programmatic specificity on many key progressive demands and a troubling penchant for pandering to the right.

If all this leaves you confused about Anderson’s true political convictions, it has evidently had the same effect on the candidate himself. As he writes on his campaign website, “If my fighting for the restoration of the rule of law and the bolstering of our most fundamental constitutional values makes me a conservative, a liberal, or a patriot, you can use whatever term you like.” Here he seems to make of himself a political Rorschach test, providing a classic example of the market-research, one-size-fits all vacuity that dominates mainstream American presidential “messaging.”

Anderson’s overtures to the political right are nothing new. In 2002, while he was Mayor of Salt Lake City, he worked closely with Mitt Romney, who was president and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games of 2002. The two got on so famously that Anderson extended his warm support to Romney’s successful 2002 gubernatorial campaign in Massachusetts. Romney returned the favor by endorsing Anderson’s re-election bid for the mayoralty of Salt Lake City in 2003. Anderson has distanced himself—somewhat—from his quondam embrace of the Great Downsizer. Anderson told Amy Goodman, “Well, that was that Mitt Romney. It’s a very different Mitt Romney, of course, who’s running for the Republican nomination for president of the United States. He’s changed his position on so many issues.” Romney’s packaging may have changed, but as recently as 2002-2003, Anderson was clearly comfortable with exchanging endorsements with a leading member and defender of the interests of the 1 percent.

Anderson’s forays into the precincts of the Right persist right up to the present. Just last month he announced that he would be seeking the nomination of Americans Elect, a proto-political party that is funded predominantly by hedge funds and is seeking to place a third-party “centrist” candidate on the ballot in all fifty states. As Harold Myerson wrote of this secretive group in the Washington Post: “We do know that its website has a ‘leadership’ list of roughly 100 people, and that of the 90 or so who aren’t the organization’s staffers or consultants, 20 are heads or leading executives of hedge funds, private equity firms and major banks. If Americans Elect is spearheading a revolution, it’s a revolution of the 1%.”

Curiously, Anderson’s open-arms policy toward the corporate right is wedded to a chronic allergy to any associations with the left. Asked by Amy Goodman why he did not seek the Green Party nomination, he said, “Well, I think the Green Party, they have a lot of great people. They have a good platform. But I think there are some organizational problems. I think they’re also perceived as being sort of a sliver of just the left in this country. We are a—we’re attracting a multi-partisan group of people. We’ve been contacted by Republicans, Libertarians, Democrats, people across the political spectrum that have just had enough. They know that there’s got to be another way.”

Notwithstanding Anderson’s rosy political ecumenicism, his campaign has generated no great groundswell of support from any segment of the electorate. Unlike the Green Party, which is already on the ballot in 21 states and expects to be listed in 40 to 48 by Election Day, Rocky Anderson’s name has found its way to only three state ballots, and some who have spoken to Anderson recently find him discouraged about his campaign’s prospects.

Michael McGee, Anderson’s campaign manager, is more upbeat. He told me that fifteen more states have “easy” requirements, but that they will need to raise substantial funds to get on in another ten—but the prospects for those petitioning drives remain hazy. Moreover, the Justice Party has yet to hold a national convention, as required by the FEC; it had announced one tentatively for last February, but it has been kicked down the road to sometime in August, with no firm date set.

So the obvious questions arise: Is Rocky Anderson serious about building a progressive alternative to the corporate duopoly parties, or is this just another exercise in political jockeying and self-promotion? According to Jill Stein, her campaign held several conference calls with Anderson and his staff in September and October of 2011, exploring grounds for unified action. The main message from the Anderson camp was a desire to conduct a hedged, safe-states campaign that would surge at the polls and then drop out at the last minute in exchange for a cabinet appointment.

Michael McGee confirms both that these conversations took place and that his party’s strategy does target the plums of high-profile government jobs. He views an all-out independent effort—the Nader approach in 2004 and 2008—as a “loser strategy, a Jehovah’s Witness approach that says to the voters: ‘This is what we believe even though we don’t think we can win.’ This simply turns people off.” What McGee advances instead is a swing-states gambit, focusing on Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Michigan, Florida, Nevada, and Virginia. “If we can get on the ballot in 9 or 10 swing states,” McGee told me, “we can affect the outcome of the election and have the leverage to get Justice Party people in Federal positions, including the Cabinet.”

This strategy may leave some progressives wondering whether Anderson is running a sincere campaign or a ruse, whether he is trying to build an independent movement or merely a Cabinet résumé. It may also leave them wondering whether the Justice Party is an organic sprout from the grass roots or an attempted graft of Rocky Anderson’s political ambitions onto the progressive movement.

Given these yawning gaps in the Justice Party’s progressive bona fides, what accounts for Nader’s embrace of Anderson’s campaign and his brush-off of the more politically congenial candidacy of Stein? There are two possible explanations, both seemingly personal rather than political. The first is that Nader’s joint appearance with Anderson in Portland was simply a personal favor to some of the leadership of Oregon’s Progressive Party—people who had worked closely with Ralph in the past.

The second pertains to Nader’s long and checkered relationship with the Green Party, extending back to his presidential run on the Green ticket in 2000. In the aftermath of that year’s Florida debacle, with the ensuing ostracism of Nader and his supporters in the corporate media and the ranks of the Democratic Party, hordes of progressives—including many Greens and notable lefties such as Michael Moore and Cornel West—rediscovered their inner lesser-evilism, viewing it as an expedient to remove Bush from office. In the 2004 race the Green Party leadership, thwarting substantial pro-Nader sentiment in the party’s rank and file, joined the stampede away from Nader and toward the welcoming arms of the Kerry campaign.

The Green leaders did not overtly endorse Kerry but rather telegraphed their de facto support by pursuing a “safe-states” strategy, rebuffing Nader (who ran on his own) and enforcing skewed national convention voting rules that assured the nomination of David Cobb, an obscure Texas insurance lawyer whose lack of renown and charisma were gift-wrapped godsends to the Kerry camp; Cobb then announced his intention to campaign vigorously only in states securely in the blue column. That low-profile, safe-states “dive” benefited neither the hapless Kerry nor his Green enablers: the Green Party’s presidential vote collapsed in 2004 (Cobb earned one-fourth of Nader’s 2004 vote total); the bitter harvest was the loss of Green ballot status in 11 states.¹

Fast forward to 2012: Ben Manski, one of the leading promoters of the 2004 Cobb campaign, is now the national manager of Jill Stein’s Green presidential bid. When I asked someone close to Nader why he had given his public blessing to Anderson rather than Stein, Manski’s name and the year 2004 popped up immediately. I was also told they resented Stein’s support of Cobb in 2004.

There is, however, a kernel of political substance lurking in Nader’s rancor about the party that once snubbed him. When I pointed out to Nader’s associate that Jill Stein was much closer to Ralph on the issues than Anderson is, the reply was, “Yeah, but given their [the Greens’] recent history, how do we know they’re serious about really remaining independent from the Democrats?” A reasonable enough question—so I took it to the source: Jill Stein herself.

Stein is baffled and frustrated by Nader’s cold shoulder. “I have repeatedly tried to speak with Ralph, but to no avail,” she told me. “This is so disappointing to me because Ralph was the person who woke me up politically. His 2000 campaign was for me political shock therapy—my political awakening. I worked so hard on his campaign—I spoke at the Super Rally for him in Boston that year.” Stein is a physician who has labored hard for the past twenty years on a host of progressive causes, beginning with local health-related issues like closing down incinerators and coal–burning plants. “I didn’t really begin to focus on these issues until I was forty years old, in 1990. Then it took me another decade to understand that progressive activism without an independent political vehicle—a party—is futile. And the 2000 Nader campaign was the clincher for me.”

She ran for governor of Massachusetts on the Green ticket in 2002 and made a favorable impression in the televised debates; one newspaper columnist wrote that she was “the only adult in the room.” She professes to have been oblivious to the Green factional battles of 2004: “I was not really tuned into the controversy between Nader and Cobb,” she told me. “I was really too clueless about internal Green Party battles to take sides. I voted for Cobb that year only because he was the party’s candidate and I was all about trying to build the Green Party.”

Stein did not seek the Green Party’s 2012 presidential nomination. Although she had been working for ten years to build the Massachusetts Greens, she did not attend her first Green Party national convention until August 2011, hoping to aid in the search for a suitable presidential candidate. But, she says, “I was approached—as in heavily arm-twisted—to become a candidate myself.” When she spoke to Cobb about the prospect of running, he told her that her candidacy would be a good idea but that he couldn’t become personally involved because the people who were recruiting her had been Nader supporters in 2004 and “still hate me.” So Nader’s Green supporters see in Stein a serious and effective proponent of Ralph’s agenda, but not the seemingly peevish Great Man himself.

Manski, whose name still can arouse the ire of the Nader camp, acknowledges the blunders of 2004. “There were many mistakes made by many people on all sides of the 2004 debate,” he told me. “The test is whether people learn from their mistakes, and whether they recognize that others have learned from their mistakes. The Greens have a lot of experience with independent politics. We’ve learned many lessons the hard way, and having survived those lessons, we are stronger for it.” He added, “Even David Cobb now thinks that the whole safe-states thing was a mistake.”

Nader, while nursing his undying pique over the Greens’ “dive” of 2004, has not always hewed to his own stringent standards of political independence in the recent past. In neither 2004 nor 2008 did Nader attempt to build an enduring party structure that would survive his presidential runs. Since then he has occasionally dipped his toe back into the waters of the Democratic Party, as in his endorsement of Jonathan Tasini’s primary run for the U.S. Senate in New York in 2010 and his more recent abortive efforts to spur a Democratic primary challenge to Obama. If Nader regards the Democratic Party as a corporate swamp where the progressive agenda sinks into oblivion, why does he lead sporadic charges into a party he so often denounces as a dead end? At least the Greens, whatever their current and past sins of temporizing and de facto complicity, have never urged direct participation in the Democratic Party. And if Nader can overlook Rocky Anderson’s embrace of the rightist corporate buccaneer Mitt Romney, why can’t he bury the hatchet over Stein’s vote for the left-liberal Cobb in 2004?

Given the widespread disillusionment with Obama among progressives and the unexpected flourishing of the Occupy movement, the 2012 election presents priceless opportunities for propagating a left message to an increasingly besieged electorate that is hungry for solutions. But what are the alternatives for the left? To dissipate and fragment its finite resources and energies among a half dozen socialist sects? To unify behind Rocky Anderson, who is spotty on program and still seemingly immured in the glad-handing, horse-trading ethos of the political establishment? Notwithstanding the Green Party’s history of organizational quirks, factional strife, and fitful irresolution in confronting the Democrats, it seems that the best opportunity to use electoral activism to complement Occupy is through Stein’s candidacy. Radical yet nonsectarian, her campaign is an all-out effort to build an independent progressive movement rather than an elaborate ploy to snare a Cabinet post or the rote ritual of a would-be socialist vanguard; in short, it’s the closest we can come, in spirit if not in size, to the Left Front in France or the Left Party of Germany.

The Greens seem at last to have gotten over their internal wars of the past decade, with the former Cobbites, now sorry about the fiasco of 2004, having joined with former Naderite Greens to back Stein; Nader, on the other hand, appears not to have gotten over or moved on, and may someday find himself sorry that he again spited the Greens, this time to back a candidate well to their—and his—right.

This political un-love story furnishes a potential lesson for all the battered antagonists: in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, forging a unified and potent left front, unburdened by opportunism, personal spite, or sectarian sanctimony, means never having to say you’re sorry.

1. For a detailed account of the Green leadership’s convention manipulations that led to Cobb winning the party’ presidential nomination with only a small minority of Green primary votes, see “How David Cobb Became the Green Nominee Even Though He Only Got 12 Percent of the Votes,” by Carol Miller and Forrest Hill, CounterPunch, August 7-9, 2004; for the specifics on the post-Cobb contraction of the Green Party, see “All That’s Left Is the Cobb: The Decline of the Green Party,” by Steve Greenfield, CounterPunch, March 19-21, 2005.

Then came in Omar Suleiman, the highest-ranking torturer of Mubarak, who had been nominated by the pharaoh himself as his successor. This caused a major upheaval in Egypt public opinion.

Meanwhile the judiciary had dissolved the constitutional commission as not being representative of the Egypt people. Thanks to their parliamentary majority the different Islamist factions were de facto able to take full control of the commission. All other forces had withdrawn their participation protesting against the Islamist dominance.

Eventually the electoral commission decreed the exclusion of ten candidates among whom there the frontrunners Suleiman himself, el-Shater as well as the down-to-earth Salafi Hazem Abu Ismail.

As an immediate reaction the MB as well as the Salafi current of Abu Ismail had called for Friday, April 13, for the first major mobilisation on the Tahrir since months. The left refused to participate as the Muslim Brotherhood had been for nearly one year in alliance with the ruling Military Council (SCAF) against the Tahrir. They on their turn called for a major mobilisation on Friday, 20th April. The different Islamists could not do other than to join in, despite significant opposition from the Tahrir milieu generating also conflicts on the ground. As a consequence there were seven platforms within the rally displaying these differentiations. Nevertheless it was the first time since the ouster of Mubarak that the Muslim Brotherhood and Tahrir participated together in the same demonstration.

It is therefore not by accident that Al-Jazeera (close to the Muslim Brotherhood ) reported a turnout of only tens of thousands while the pro-Tahrir Al-Quds al-Arabi spoke of two million participants.

Failed army test balloon with collateral use

If there is a figure symbolizing the ancien regime then it is Omar Suleiman. To field him as a presidential candidate must have triggered public outrage. Even the powerless parliament, without any constitutional function but to name the constitutional commission, voted on a draft law banning figures associated with the old regime from running for presidency. Much more important, major mass mobilisations have been in the making forcing also the Islamist forces including the Muslim Brotherhood out of their bloc with the SCAF.

All of a sudden the generals pulled the brake and the electoral commission banned Suleiman from participating. But there were major strings attached. They excluded not only him but along Suleiman two frontrunners, namely the Muslim Brother el-Shater and the Salafi Abu Ismail. If this move did not imply a setback for themselves, one could suppose that Suleiman was sent from the very start into the presidential race as a gambit to be sacrificed in the right moment.

In this way the SCAF chased away their most important rivals and still got Amr Mousa within the race. Their even thus succeeded to move his appearance a bit away from the old regime. He will play the card on which also Suleiman was betting: security, stability and warding off Islamism.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s predicament

Back in autumn the Muslim Brotherhood was able to score a landslide victory in the parliamentary elections against the Tahrir’s street protest movement. The revolutionaries argued that the parliament under continued military rule was only decoration. Therefore they demanded first the withdrawal of the junta to be completed and then elections should be held. Only in this sequence democratic proceedings could be secured. But the passive majority yearned for elections at any cost and under any conditions. The Muslim Brotherhood sold their victory as a further step of their soft and painless transition to civil rule.

Actually the warnings by the Tahrir people were proved right. The co-operation of the Muslim Brotherhood with the SCAF let to the stabilisation and prolongation of the junta’s rule. Significant parts of the people including the Muslim Brotherhood’s electorate started to understand these dynamics and turned away from them. Because also for their constituencies to end military rule is of great importance.

The technical details of the exclusion of el-Shater exemplify where the tactics of the Muslim Brotherhood lead to. It was them to vote for the referendum designed by the SCAF keeping the old constitutional framework. Their hope for a share of power made them desist from reforms like the rehabilitation of Mubarak’s victims and the abrogation of the repressive laws. Now the judiciary banned el-Shater as being a former political prisoner.

The Muslim Brotherhood is facing adverse winds not only from the side of the military and the left but also from the very widely differentiated Islamist milieu itself. With Abu Ismail a very popular Salafi figure has been rallying support mainly among the poorest layers of society. Today they are also on the street against the SCAF refusing the leadership of the MB.

If the Muslim Brotherhood does not want to lose its central role in post-Mubarak Egypt they need to participate in the mass movement or at least refrain from confronting the Tahrir. And they will be forced to loosen their de facto bloc with the junta. Otherwise both their Islamist rivals and to a lesser extent the left will eat away from their sphere of influence.

Regarding the upcoming elections the Muslim Brotherhood has still the head of their Freedom and Justice Party, Mohamed Mursi, in the field. But few believe that he can make it. Their second option would be to withdraw Mursi and to embrace Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, whom they kicked out of the MB for running against their will. He used to represent the liberal wing of the Muslim Brotherhood who also kept a channel to the Tahrir. But such a U turn could also be interpreted as a weakness.

From whatever side one looks at it, it is quite obvious that the MB will have to pay a bill for their co-operation with the SCAF against the democratic popular movement. That does, however, not mean that they are finished. Their popular credit and their political capital accumulated in decades are too large to be spent within a few months. In the same way as their relation to the army will be uneven it will be with the US. Twists and turns are to be expected maintaining their constituencies. Their recent participation on the Tahrir is one of them.

Revolutionary magma still hot

The heavy storm of protest caused by Suleiman’s candidature eventually leading to the weakening of the Muslim Brotherhood’s alliance with the junta indicates that the democratic popular movement is alive and kicking. The massive Tahrir rally of April 20 was not only directed against Suleiman, Mousa and other henchmen of the old regime, but demanded also the withdrawal of the SCAF – taking up the struggle on the eve of the parliamentary elections. While the MB asks for the reinstatement of their constitutional commission the Tahrir people demand a constituent assembly chosen by general elections and not by the parliament. Only later on presidential election could be useful. First the SCAF must go. This position is in strong contrast to the Muslim Brotherhood which regards the presidency as the key solution.

The Tahrir is absolutely right to insist on deposing the SCAF as the central task. The popular movement will gain few from the presidential elections. Even more as with the parliamentary elections the Tahrir was not granted the procedural possibilities to contest. Furthermore nobody knows which role the future president ought to play.

But the run-up also shows the troubles of the fragile alliance of SCAF and the Muslim Brotherhood. It is quite likely that neither Mousa nor Mursi will make it. For Fotouh there are better chances. To a certain extent he is accountable to the Tahrir. That does not mean that he will not be absorbed into the system, but at higher costs. His possible victory will, however, not be a bad token for the movement. But also the candidate of the historic left, the Nasserite Hamdeen Sabahi, might take a significant vote share.

It is therefore absolutely wrong to speak of an “Islamic winter” or of the reproduction of US rule in other forms. The popular movement is consolidating, remains a decisive factor and the game keeps open with many rounds still to come.

• Originally published at Anti-imperialist Camp newsletter.

Such figures were not anticipated.  The gains made by Le Pen demonstrate that she is more than a mere spoiler. More significantly, it shows on par, if not better performance, than that of her father’s effort in 2002, when Jean-Marie found himself a terror of the establishment, and particularly of the socialists.  The socialist candidate Lionel Jospin was well and truly trounced, leaving French voters with the agony of voting for Jacques Chirac in an effort to keep the founder of the National Front out.

Marine Le Pen’s suggestions are colourful and, in many cases, appealing.  The electorate has not been swung by accusations of insanity levelled against her by the supporters of the Front de Gauche contender Jean-Luc Mélechon, who may in time become a damp squib, despite previously doing a nice and inspiring line in rhetoric.  In fact, it might be said that his efforts have gone some way to invigorating what was threatening to be a tedious electoral race.  Those votes cast in his favour will probably be gobbled in subsequent runoffs by the main socialist candidate, François Hollande, who Mélechon described as being as ‘useful as the captain of a pedalo in a storm.’

The euro has taken a true trashing, as has its institutional framework, and capitalising on hostility has been the Far Right’s trademark in these elections.  Le Pen has promised to abandon the Common Agricultural Policy, to leave the Schengen zone as a matter of formality, and reduce legal immigration to France to a paltry 10,000 a year.  Nicolas Sarkozy has found himself having to play the game of the Right as well, making himself something of an insincere replica.  Inside Sarko is a Le Pen waiting to get out with a certain cruel dedication. Witness, in view of this, the expulsion in 2011 of 32,912 illegal immigrants from France.  His election platform, however, has one more zero in terms of allowing legal immigrants into the country.

The socialists should also have every reason to be worried.  The centre-left Hollande may have obtained 28.6 percent of the vote to Sarkozy’s 27.1 percent, but Le Pen’s voters find themselves as arbiters of the broader electoral consequences at stake.  Blue collar votes have been heading Le Pen’s way, notably from the pools of the estranged unemployed. In some circles, the issue of Europe ranks less than the issue of chronic employment.  The threat of abstention amongst the voters remains ever present, despite the French sense of political engagement.

Whoever wins will find escaping the viciousness of austerity hard to avoid.  Neither of the main candidates is what he claims to be – Hollande having shed his militant stance on protectionism, and Sarko no longer the obsessive high priest of neoliberalism.  While the French will continue to indulge the sense of singularity, their politicians will offer another reality – one where technocratic austerity reigns supreme in a country where public debt levels hover around 90 percent.

I continued my lecture, unaware of her presence until my students’ eyes began focusing upon her rather than me.

“Yes?” I asked. Just “yes.” Nothing more.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” she said peacefully. I was confused. So she said it again, this time a little sharper.

“Ma’am,” I began, but she cut me off. I tried to defuse the situation, but couldn’t reason with her. She pulled a gun from her purse and shot me, then quickly left. I recovered immediately.

It took less than a minute.

The scene was an exercise in a newswriting class, unannounced but highly planned. My assignment was for the students to quickly write down everything they could about the incident. What happened. What was said. What she looked like. What she was wearing. Just the facts. Nothing more.

Everyone got some of the information right, but no one got all the facts, even the ones they were absolutely positively sure they saw or heard correctly. And, most interestingly, the “gun” the visitor used and which the students either couldn’t identify or misidentified was in reality a . . . banana; a painted black banana, but a banana nevertheless. The actual gun shot was on tape broadcast by a hidden recorder I activated.

It was a lesson in observation and truth. Witnesses often get the facts wrong, unable to distinguish events happening on top of each other. Sometimes they even want to “help” the reporter and say what they think the reporter wants to hear.

Reporters are society’s witnesses who record history by interviewing other witnesses, and they all make mistakes not because they want to but because everyone’s experiences and perceptions fog reality.

Of the infinite number of facts and observations that occur during a meeting, reporters must select a few, and then place them in whatever order they think is most important. Which few they select, which thousands they don’t select — and, more important — which facts they don’t even know exist–all make up a news story, usually written under deadline pressure. Thus, it isn’t unusual for readers to wonder how reporters could have been in the same meeting as they were since the published stories didn’t seem to reflect the reality of the meeting.

But there are some facts that are verifiable. We know that a South American country is spelled “Colombia,” not “Columbia.” We know that Theodore Roosevelt was a progressive Republican. And we know that the current World Series champions are the St. Louis Cardinals not, regrettably, the San Diego Padres.

But, for far too many in my profession, facts and the truth are subverted by a process that has become he said/she said journalism. We take notes at meetings, recording who said what. If there are conflicting statements, we try to quote all the opinions, even the dumb ones, believing we are being “fair and balanced.” If  a news source says the world is flat, we write that, and then see if we can find someone who will say that it is round—or maybe square.

When we write features and personality profiles, we tend to take what we are told, craft it into snappy paragraphs, and hope the readers don’t fall asleep. If someone shyly tells us he earned a Silver Star for heroism during the Vietnam War, we don’t demand to see the certificate—or question how a 50 year old, who was wasn’t even in his teens when the war ended, could actually have served during the Vietnam war.

At the local level, although we’re trained to be cynical, we aren’t. If a mayor or police chief tells us something, we attribute the quote, figuring we did our duty. Maybe we ask a couple of questions, but we tend not to pursue them—we have far too many stories to write and far too little time. Besides, if the facts are wrong, we believe we’re “protected,” since it’s not we who said it but someone else. Legally, of course, we’re still responsible for factual error even if someone else said it and we accurately quote that person, but we don’t worry about the technicalities.

Adequate reporters get their facts from people in authority; the great reporters know truth is probably known by the secretaries, custodians, and other workers. We just have to find the right sources, dig out the facts, and verify them.

And now comes another presidential election, and we continue to perpetuate lies by not challenging those who spout them. Rick Santorum says California’s public colleges don’t teach American history—and we write down his lie. Mitt Romney claims he never said the Massachusetts health care plan was a model for the entire country, that Barack Obama never mentioned the deficit during his state of the union or that the President is constantly apologizing for America, and we write that without challenge. Newt Gingrich, like most Republican candidates for president and Congress, wants us to believe he’s an “outsider” and a fiscal conservative, and we go along with the fiction. Barack Obama said he’d be a leader for defending Constitutional rights, yet willingly signed an extension of the PATRIOT Act, which curtails civil liberties.

Pick a candidate—any candidate, any party—and we think we’re “fair” because we record what he or she said, even of it’s a lie, a half-truth, an exaggeration, a distortion, or a misconception. Perhaps American politicians have internalized the wisdom of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels who said “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Quoting people isn’t journalism—it’s clerking. We’re merely taking words, transcribing them, and publishing them. Journalism demands we challenge our sources and find the truth. As one grizzled city editor said in the late 19th century, if your mother claims to be your mother, demand a birth certificate. It was good advice then; it is even better advice now.

The excellent News Sniffer website exposed how the Guardian hurriedly fixed political editor Patrick Wintour’s ugly analysis of Galloway’s 10,140 majority win, with a staggering swing of 36 per cent from Labour to the Respect party. Wintour’s shoddy journalism had initially focused on how the constituency’s ‘Muslim immigrant community’ had largely abandoned Labour. The offensive trope of ‘immigrant’ Muslims appeared three times in his piece. And Galloway’s popular call for the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan, and ‘a fightback against the job crisis’, was disparagingly cast as ‘fundamentalist’.

It was shocking to see such elitist disdain for majority British views and for ‘immigrant’ communities expressed by a senior Guardian journalist. Someone on the newspaper, perhaps spotting the danger of the nation’s flagship ‘liberal’ newspaper appearing so illiberal, acted swiftly to hide the evidence. Too late, News Sniffer was on the trail. This is what Wintour wrote:

‘It appeared that the seat’s Muslim immigrant community had decamped from Labour en masse to Galloway’s fundamentalist call for an immediate British troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and a fightback against the job crisis.’

This was amended to:

‘It appeared that the seat’s Muslim community had decamped from Labour en masse to Galloway’s call for an immediate British troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and a fightback against the job crisis.’

Further key changes are easily visible here.

‘The Muslim Vote’

It is customary for the media to cast an honest, uncompromising political voice as ‘controversial’ and ‘maverick’ (or worse). And journalists did not disappoint. On the News at Ten, celebrity presenter Fiona Bruce, reportedly on a BBC salary of half a million pounds per year, referred blithely to ‘controversial ex-Labour MP George Galloway’. (March 30, 2012). The British public will wait in vain for her to refer to the ‘controversial’ Prime Minister David Cameron or the ‘controversial’ President Barack Obama.

In a News at Ten ‘analysis’, the BBC’s Iain Watson reported, with the broadcaster’s version of impartiality, that Galloway had compared his victory to the Arab Spring and ‘cheekily suggested he was challenging the entire British establishment’. (March 30, 2012)

But perhaps Galloway’s suggestion was accurate, ‘cheeky’ or no. Galloway was, in fact, pretty devastating in challenging the British media establishment in interview after interview. On Channel 4 News, Midlands correspondent Darshni Soni asserted that Galloway’s ‘fiery rhetoric on Iraq and Afghanistan specifically targeted young Muslims’; as though only ‘young Muslims’ should be concerned about Iraq and Afghanistan. (‘“Young Muslims defied elders to vote for Galloway”’, C4 News, March 30, 2012)

Soni tried to trip up Galloway:

Soni: ‘But what do you say to people who say you played that race card – you specifically targeted young Muslim men?’

George Galloway: ‘Well, I think it was Labour that put up the Pakistani Muslim candidate, not us. So that’s a ludicrous charge, to be honest.’

Soni: ‘But you talked a lot about Iraq, Afghanistan.’

Galloway: ‘Well, Iraq and Afghanistan are not issues only for Muslims.’

Also on Channel 4 News, Cathy Newman sought, like so many before her, to outwit Galloway — only to come out of the encounter with egg on her face. (‘Cathy Newman interviews George Galloway’, C4 News, March 30, 2012)

Newman: ‘George Galloway, you’ve described this as the most sensational upset in history. I think you got a little carried away – there were two previous results with bigger swings. But it is pretty sensational nevertheless. What do you put it down to?’

Galloway: ‘No I don’t think I was exaggerating, if you’ll forgive me, I’m a bit of a student of these matters. No party to the left of Labour has ever taken a Labour seat in a period when Labour has been in opposition.’

Newman pressed on: ‘You’re defining your terms very clearly and quite narrowly, but within those terms a sensational victory – what do you put it down to?’

Galloway responded amicably: ‘I don’t know why you’re being so churlish about this. I know more about left-wing history than you do, I assure you. But anyway, I put it down to a tidal wave of alienation in the country, and not just in Bradford, against the Tweedledee-Tweedledum politics of the major parties.’

This is surely right. When much that matters is so clearly going wrong in this country and the world at large, no wonder the public is thoroughly sick of the fodder that is dished out as ‘responsible’ policies, debate and reporting.

Galloway continued: ‘I think we saw what I described last night as “a Bradford Spring” moment – a kind of uprising, a peaceful democratic uprising of especially young people.’

Newman responded with barely disguised disdain: ‘Isn’t it slightly presumptuous or even arrogant though to describe a … to compare a by-election victory with a revolution that has claimed tens of thousands of lives across the Arab world?’

Galloway exposed the biased stance of C4 News: ‘Well I can see you and I are not getting on very well and probably that’s a sign that I should go and do one of the many other interviews that are waiting for me. You obviously weren’t listening or you’re not hearing me …’

Newman: ‘I’m hearing you perfectly well…’

Galloway: ‘…I said a peaceful democratic uprising, a peaceful democratic uprising – that’s what I think it was. You evidently don’t. We’ll see if it comes to anything. Thanks very much – because I really do have a lot of very important interviews to do.’

As one of our regular readers later reminded us on the Media Lens message board, the encounter was reminiscent of Jeremy Paxman’s remarkable May 2005 interview with Galloway after he had won the Bethnal Green and Bow seat from the war-supporting, Blairite MP, Oona King. In a dismal lowlight of a long BBC career, Paxman repeatedly asked Galloway:

‘Are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in Parliament?’

Galloway rightly disparaged Paxman’s question as ‘preposterous’ saying that: ‘I don’t believe that people get elected because of the colour of their skin. I believe people get elected because of their record and their policies.’

There was more to come from the BBC. In an extraordinary segment on BBC Radio Five Live, reporter Anna Foster fired a series of hostile and loaded questions at Galloway. Just hours after his electoral victory, Foster kept asking why he had come to Bradford – an issue that he rightly said he had dealt with on numerous occasions before the election. Galloway took her to task for focusing on ‘the’ Muslim vote, as though Muslim voters were a homogeneous mass:

‘This is very incendiary and inflammatory language which the BBC keep using.’

After giving Foster several more minutes of his time, Galloway rightly described the interview as ‘a hatchet job’ and left the studio, leaving the BBC reporter flabbergasted.

Later that day on BBC2’s Newsnight, reporter Peter Marshall recycled the same discredited language: ‘It’s said you’ve relied very heavily on the Muslim vote. I mean, you yourself have said in the past that you used (sic)… you have the Muslim vote…’

Galloway responded: ‘I really reject this concept of “the” Muslim vote. Muslims are individuals just like everyone else. You wouldn’t say that there’s a “Christian vote” because Christians vote in all sorts of ways. And the Labour candidate, I remind you, was a Pakistani Muslim. So I really don’t think that’s a valid question. Every voter is an individual and every voter has to be appealed to.’

Marshall managed to include the standard description of Galloway as ‘a singular figure, a political maverick’ who ‘in triumph’ is ‘unrepentant’. What he was supposed to be ‘unrepentant’ about wasn’t made clear. Perhaps for appearing on Celebrity Big Brother, pretending to be a cat licking milk from Rula Lenska’s cupped hands: stock footage that news broadcasters are seemingly obliged to repeat whenever Galloway is mentioned.

The Wolf Man

The Observer played its part as well, publishing not just one but two anti-Galloway comment pieces. The first, by Andrew Rawnsley, set the tone, referring acerbically to Galloway’s ‘blushing modesty which makes him such an appealing character’. This was a dig at the Respect politician supposedly acclaiming Bradford West ‘the most sensational victory in British political history’. But, shooting himself in the foot, Rawnsley had got the quote wrong. Galloway had called it ‘the most sensational result in British by-election history’, not ‘political history’ – a crucial distinction. As we have seen, Galloway had clearly explained the basis for his claim.

For Galloway to draw any kind of comparison with the Arab Spring was, said Rawnsley, ‘a very advanced form of narcissism’. The Observer columnist then added the sly comment that Galloway had ‘declined to offer his fusion of Marxism and Islamism to voters at the five previous byelections of this parliament’. Whatever counts as a ‘fusion of Marxism and Islamism’ was not spelled out. It was instead left hanging in the air as something to be regarded by right-minded people as dangerously anti-capitalist and un-Christian; perhaps even unpatriotic and anti-British. But arguably the most blatant propaganda element of the Observer piece was the accompanying sinister-looking photograph of Galloway, reminiscent of Lon Chaney Jr as The Wolf Man.

By an amazing coincidence – or not – a second Observer hit piece by Nick Cohen deployed a similarly sinister photograph of Galloway. The Observer’s picture editor had obviously been busy scouring the pictorial archives and struck gold not once, but twice. The comment piece also had a cartoon-like flavour. For example, Galloway’s ‘claim’ that his by-election victory was the ‘Bradford spring’ exhibited, Cohen said, ‘contemptible willingness to exploit the suffering of others for the purposes of self-aggrandisement’ which ‘no politician can beat’. No politician? Not even Cohen’s hero Tony Blair, who exploited the deaths of millions in the Middle East for his own self-aggrandisement as a ‘peace maker’?

Almost in a parody of himself, Cohen wrote that: ‘Galloway and others on the far left believe that Muslims can replace the white working class that let them down so badly by refusing to follow their orders to seize power.’

One had to check the date of publication. Yes, it was published on April 1. But, nonetheless, Observer readers were forced to accept that this was indeed not a spoof piece by a spoof Cohen.

The attitude was summed up by the title of a Liberal Conspiracy blog, run by Sunny Hundal: ‘When populism is dangerous for democracy.’ Hundal, the Guardian‘s ‘blogger of the year’ in 2006, was himself busy on Twitter. He referred to Galloway in responding to a questioner: ‘I don’t want any part of a left that supports dictators thanks. Maybe you do.’

We were intrigued by this and responded: ‘Yet you write that Obama’s re-election “is worth fighting for.” Does Obama not support, indeed arm, dictators?’

The following day, Hundal replied. Here are some highlights from the subsequent exchange:

Sunny Hundal (SH): ‘answer to that question is simple: as Us Prez Obama can’t easily call for dictators to go. But Galloway isn’t leader: he can.’

Media Lens (ML): ‘You can’t reject George Galloway for dictator “support” and then back Obama who arms them, actually helps them kill.’

SH: ‘can you name me one dictator that one Obama has cheerleaded for?’

Writer and activist Ian Sinclair replied:

‘Mubarak “is a stalwart ally… a force for stability and good” – Obama to BBC, 2009 http://bit.ly/H2ZeLg’

We responded to Hundal:

ML: ‘Simple questions 1) Has Obama armed dictators? 2) Is that more or less important than what he/Galloway says about dictators?’

SH: 1) ‘Has he personally sanctioned arming of dictators? No. They can buy weapons from China/Russia too, as Libya did.’

SH: ‘he [Obama] didn’t support Mubarak.’

We replied with a quote from 2011 in The Times on US aid to Egypt: ML: ‘”the Mubarak regime is still receiving $1.3 billion of military aid each year from America.” (The Times, January 31, 2011)’

SH: ‘Just for your info, since you guys set yourself up as a major source of info and critique: “military aid” is not guns/ammo.’

ML: ‘True. Do F-16 jets, M-1A1 tanks, Harpoon, TOW, Hellfire, and Stinger missiles count? http://tinyurl.com/5rwx7zf’

SH: ‘might help if you recognised that most of it referred to stuff over a decade, not during Obama. Now, answer my question?’

ML: ‘Details here: http://tinyurl.com/2ekorm9 May 2009 Apache attack helicopter sale here: http://tinyurl.com/7djfdzl‘

And indeed Hundal’s position was completely untenable. To sample at random, the Washington Post reported last December:

‘The Obama administration on Thursday announced an arms deal with Saudi Arabia valued at nearly $30 billion, an agreement that will send 84 F-15 fighter jets and assorted weaponry to the kingdom.’

And so on. Hundal wriggled and dug himself ever deeper. For us, it was another encounter with the curious capacity for ‘selective inattention’ found at the intellectual fringe otherwise known as ‘the mainstream media’. For Hundal, Galloway’s words really are far worse crimes than Obama’s active participation in the arming and diplomatic protection of murderous dictators who use his support to kill large numbers of people.

Closing Remarks

In our 2005 media alert, Ambushing Dissent, also analysing media treatment of Galloway, we noted how ‘across the spectrum, “rogue” thinkers, politicians and parties are relentlessly smeared and mocked by the elite media. The effect is as inevitable as it is intended – to persuade the public to revile and turn away from radical voices threatening established privilege and power.’

The response to Galloway’s latest electoral victory from the Guardian, the Observer, Channel 4 News and the BBC piles on the evidence. It shows – once again – that the supposedly liberal media, purveyors of ‘open journalism,’ will fight tooth and nail to neutralise anyone who challenges the establishment status quo.

And yet it could hardly be more obvious that the British political system has degenerated into a grotesque, neo-feudalist fraud representing the same elite interests under different brand names. Our politics is structurally addicted to greed-based ‘humanitarian’ militarism, to exacerbating the catastrophic threat of climate change, and to denying the public any serious choice on the major policy issues of the day. An honest media would welcome any small sign of hope that the iron grip of this corrupt and oppressive system might be subject to serious challenge.

A poll by the Independent on Sunday shows that 72% of people believe the Government is “out of touch with ordinary voters” and 60% do not trust the Prime Minister and the Chancellor on the economy. Yet the Labour Party lost this safe seat in a landslide to George Galloway.

People do not trust this government but they are not willing to put their trust in Labour either. And who could blame them for that? George Galloway put the reasons for the lack of trust in the main parties colourfully and succinctly:

If a backside could have three cheeks then they [the main parties] are the three cheeks of the same backside. They support the same things, the same wars, the same neoliberal policies to make the poor poorer for the crimes of the rich people. And they are not believable. Nobody believes what they say.

The report “Reading The Riots” commissioned by the Guardian and the London School of Economics quotes a 23 year old man from Liverpool who took part in the UK (August 2011) riots saying: “It doesn’t really matter if it’s Labour or Conservative because the people behind the scenes are always the same…”

George Galloway articulated the frustration of ordinary voters, regardless of ethnicity or faith, with the politics of the main parties in a way that resonated with their daily struggles and experiences. So please let us not insult their intelligence by suggesting that faith and ethnicity has something to do with his victory. Lest we forget he was standing against a local Muslim ethnic minority Labour candidate.

It is not only politicians that are out of touch. The BBC, funded by us, the taxpayers, is meant to reflect the opinions of people across Britain. Alas, it is no longer doing that. When, if ever, do we hear political opinions that challenge the economic orthodoxy of austerity and wars?

Discussions are restricted to establishment figures and the main political parties arguing within the parameters of the middle ground, tweaking this policy or that but no major rethink of an economic policy that is manifestly unfair and unjust. Moreover, it does not even work within the narrow objectives it has set for itself.

In any case, this narrow band of the middle ground is where the main parties perceive it to be. They are wrong. The BBC has a duty to air other opinions, Caroline Lucas leader of the Green Party for example, and yes, George Galloway and others to puncture the straight jacket in which discussions are conducted. It is a must for true democracy, so that an informed decision can be made by us, the electorate. Additionally, I have no doubt that it will lift the quality of the debate.

The Bradford West by-election has demonstrated the pent up distrust of all major parties and their policies of wars and cuts. People are yearning for leaders who can sincerely articulate their worries and their struggles; George Galloway did that and the electorate rewarded him with an emphatic win.

On the first day of her campaign, Warren was criticized far and wide, even among those who sympathized with her, for failing to answer questions from the press with anything but the most equivocal bromides. There was one exception, however. She was asked, in what sounded like a planted question, how she felt about the Palestinian effort to put a petition for statehood before the UN General Assembly. Warren’s answer was crisp and certain. She opposed it.

Warren is no anti-interventionist. Here are some examples from the deep recesses of her web site where an issues section can be found:

On Iran:

Iran is a significant threat to the United States and our allies.  Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, it is an active state sponsor of terrorism, and its leaders have consistently challenged Israel’s right to exist. Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is unacceptable because a nuclear Iran would be a threat to the United States, our allies, the region, and the world. The United States must take the necessary steps to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. I support strong sanctions against Iran and believe that the United States must also continue to take a leadership role in pushing other countries to implement strong sanctions as well. Iran must not have an escape hatch. (JW’s emphasis.)

What will be the human costs of these sanctions? Warren does not ask; but she could check with Madeleine Albright to see if they are “worth it.”

On Afghanistan:

Our brave service members have done all that we could have asked them for and more in Afghanistan, but it is time for them to come home. We need to get out as quickly as possible, consistent with the safety of our troops and with a transition to Afghan control. I believe that this can be done faster than the current timeline. (JW’s emphasis).

What our government has asked our brave service members to do is to terrorize the population with night raids and bombing runs and to prop up a corrupt and unpopular puppet government. Warren would have us leave Afghanistan, but not until we are assured that the puppet government is secured.

On “Terrorism”:

These threats are not going away.  We must remain vigilant. Al Qaeda has operations or affiliates in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere around the world. We need to continue our aggressive efforts against Al Qaeda, and we need to continue to support the efforts of our intelligence, law enforcement, homeland security, and military professionals.

In other words, the drone attacks and clandestine wars will continue if Warren has anything to say about it. The endless, phony “war on terrorism” must go on and on and on, in Warren’s view.

On Israel:

As a United States Senator, I will work to ensure Israel’s security and success.  I believe Israel must maintain a qualitative military edge and defensible borders. The United States must continue to ensure that Israel can defend itself from terrorist organizations and hostile states, including Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and others. (JW’s Emphasis.)

Translation:  If Warren gets her way, the flow of billions from the strapped American taxpayer into Israel’s bellicose pocket will go on, allowing Israel to continue its slaughter of Gazans and others, all “terrorists” to be sure. Although Warren goes on to pay lip service to a “two-state solution” in Palestine, she fails to mention on her site that she is dead set against those uppity Palestinians going to the UN to get their mini-state.

Warren’s campaign is increasingly sappy – clear evidence that she does not want a campaign of issues perhaps most especially her interventionist proclivities which are detestable to a big chunk of voters whom she needs. In one appeal for donations, Warren pointed out her links to Girl Scouts and their cookie sales! Given her desire to tighten sanctions, which make life increasingly difficult for the children of Iran, she might adopt as a slogan “Let them eat Girl Scout cookies.”

Warren’s opponent, Scott Brown, is no better. He too has been a poodle for the military industrial complex and for AIPAC in his brief and undistinguished sojourn in the Senate. Brown took office in a special election after the death of Teddy Kennedy at a time when disillusion with Obama was growing ever stronger, and many votes poured in for him as a form of anti-Obama protest. He continued on his merry way with his betrayal of those who supported and donated to him, a lot of them right here in Massachusetts. Warren has his heartfelt support.

These candidates are of not of much importance in and of themselves. But they both illustrate a grand bargain between the two War Parties and the voters who line up behind them. Scott Brown promises to lower taxes, a promise always broken, if the voters will allow him to back the wars of Empire. What kind of morality lies in that bargain, his supporters might well ask themselves.

Elizabeth Warren is the same. I will give you a consumer protection agency she says, which may – or may not – save you a few pennies. In turn by your vote you will allow me to support sanctions on nations that defy the U.S and to support the bombing and wanton slaughter of innocents far and wide in the developing world. That is the bargain she offers those who would vote for her. What kind of morality lies in that bargain, her supporters might well ask themselves.

It’s not procrastination, it’s just that I’m a Pennsylvanian, and the state encourages me to be behind the times. At one time, Pennsylvania was first in just about everything — and then Ben Franklin died. Since then, we’ve been first in ridiculous license plate slogans.

When other states, including those settled by Puritans, got rid of their “blue laws,” Pennsylvania still bans the sale of cars on Sundays. By archaic practices, it still allows municipal governments and school districts to raise taxes and create more buildings without giving the people the right of a vote, common in most states. It is also the only state that still taxes people for income, property, and their occupation. Forty-nine other states have ruled pigeon shoots to be animal cruelty; we proudly proclaim our state as the last bastion of the right to “bear arms and blast birds.” And, we don’t allow Independents to vote in our primaries.

Iowa, with anomalies known as a straw poll and a caucus, is the first major battleground in presidential races, having usurped New Hampshire, which thought having the official primary was a birthright dating to when granite first showed up in the state. Nevertheless, whether Iowa or New Hampshire, Americans understand that the people need something to break them out of their Winter funk when snow covers what will eventually become cornfields in Iowa and the ski lifts of New Hampshire will no longer be inoperable because of blizzards.

With nothing else to do in January, the media schussed into the Hawkeye State—just as soon as they could find enough chauffeurs to drive them to wherever Iowa is. With megawatt lights and dimly-lit minds, they infiltrated the state so that the voters not only had their own individualized politicians, they also had their own puppy-dog reporters prancing brightly behind them to the coffee shop, factory, and bathroom.

Surrounded by the media who smugly said they were only telling the public what they needed to know to defend and preserve democracy—and millions in advertising revenue—the candidates played to the press, attacking each other rather than attacking the issues. In neatly-packaged seven-second sound bites, politicians and the media sliced, diced, and crunched the campaign to fit onto a 21-inch screen.

Because of an inner need to believe they matter, the media predict who will win the nomination, changing their predictions as quickly as a fashionista changes shoes. For what seemed to be decades, the ink-stained bandwagon has pulled voters and campaign dollars, and left Pennsylvania voters waiting at the altar for candidates who don’t care anymore, abandoned by the media who have found other “stories of the month.”

For all practical purposes, the Pennsylvania primaries, with large slates of uncontested local and state races, is about as useless as a Department of Ethnic Studies at Bob Jones University. By the time the 2000 primary rolled into Pennsylvania, Al Gore and George W. Bush each had 65 percent of the delegate vote needed for their parties’ nomination. In 2004, Bush and John Kerry had already locked up the nominations. In 2008, Pennsylvania became a pivotal state for the Democrats for the first time since 1976, with Hillary Clinton defeating Barack Obama before losing the nomination by June. For the Republicans, it was “business as usual,” with John McCain having already sewn up the nomination.

A Republican needs 1,144 delegate votes to get the nomination. Mitt Romney, America’s best runner-up, has 568; two-term senator Rick Santorum, recovering from a blistering loss to a moderate Democrat in Pennsylvania’s 2006 Senate campaign, has 273; Ron Paul, who may or may not be a Republican, has 50. Newt Gingrich has 135 delegates; however, this week he announced he downsized his staff and campaign, and is layin’ low—except, of course, for the times he can get free TV time to lambaste Romney and Santorum who are engaged in a vicious personal battle that has bubbled out of the TV ad cauldron.

The April 3 primaries will add a maximum of 98 delegates. And that brings Super Northeast Tuesday, April 24. The Republican leftovers and their never-ending TV ads will blitz Pennsylvania, which might even become relevant.

Even if Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Rhode Island—and Pennsylvania with 72 of the 231 delegate votes—go for Romney, it won’t be enough to get him the nomination. However, it will be enough to cause major financial backers to pull their support for Santorum and what’s left of the Gingrich campaign, leaving Romney to flip-flop into the Republican nomination convention, August 27, in Tampa, Fla.—which seems to be the Republicans’ destiny.

What if Tim Tebow was a Muslim, and he, instead of Tebowing (kneeling in prayer during and before and after games) he kept turning towards Mecca and went to his knees in prayer before, during and after games? One wonders if those same folks who think Tim is such a devout religious man would think the same of Tim Tebow, Muslim. By the way, if one truly is a follower of Jesus the Christ (as this writer happens to be, by the way) one would know that Jesus taught to not parade one’s beliefs in public prayer or ceremony. Rather, he said to go and pray in the upmost privacy or with another in the upmost privacy… and NOT in public displays of passion.

What if Israel had a Palestinian man who lived next door to you on their “terrorist watch list” for compensating the families of suicide bombers? This neighbor of yours was a congenial guy, with a good profession, and he was a darn nice neighbor at that. One day, the Israelis decide to “take him out” with a drone attack. It succeeded, but in doing so there is the collateral damage of the two homes adjoining his — one of which happens to be yours! You get that terrible phone call at work informing you that your spouse and your two kids are….dead!! Will you still support the politicians (of both corrupt parties, by the way) who advocate drone attacks into Pakistan and elsewhere?

What if you support this corrupt and disgraceful health care system of private insurance OR the so called “Obama Care” which continues to feed the private insurance beast? You refuse to stand firm and demand that we have the option for buying into the Medicare system at obviously lower prices and somewhat better coverage than what private insurance now offers. What if you or your spouse or your teenage child gets a devastating illness that private insurance cannot cover completely? The costs are astronomical and they come after you, once the dust settles, for tens of thousands of dollars that you do not have?

What if you continue to support this military industrial empire that takes over 50% of your federal taxes each year? You buy the lies that this is necessary for our defense, while you notice more and more budget cuts are happening around you… locally, statewide and nationally. Your schools are being abandoned, library funds cut drastically, police and fire personnel being cut down. You see layoffs and foreclosures abound, and the “rally round the flag” festivals and events increase. They tell you to “support our troops” as they are sent to occupy, control and destroy other nations that pose no real threat to our national security. When unemployment and uncertainty suck the very life out of your community, and you see more and more homeless, destitute and desperate folks walking about — when is “enough really enough” ?

So, keep buying into the con job that “your vote counts” as you support either of these two corrupt political parties. Keep thinking that an annual visit to a voting booth is enough to counteract the empire’s tentacles. Don’t dare get out and stand in public for a better world… week after week, month after month until more of your neighbors begin to “get it”. No, just keep saying, “Oh, what can I do anyway?” as we all slide into the black hole caused by apathy and self interest. Remember, the greed and the violence and the corruption that many of us disdain must still have some elements of them imbedded within our own psyches or we would finally rid our society of them.

If we want to save life and humanity, we are obliged to end the capitalist system.

— Bolivian President Evo Morales

We hear and read that the economy is rebounding – again – and this during a multi billion dollar presidential campaign. Gee. Threats of more foreign wars are also unrelated to politics, nor are the signs of mental and physical breakdowns in our military which shouldn’t worry anyone now that the economy is rebounding. Again. Unfortunately, the corporate perspective from which everything is looking so good still rules our consciousness but among many subjects of the system, critical thinking is advancing. Though sometimes very slowly, as when decent people are swept up in emotional tsunamis by a manipulation device called social media.

An online phenomena about Invisible Children recently caused an offline tragedy among Invisible Adult Mentalities. The same social media that help provoke changes among people seeking democracy also offer opportunities for an opposition to maintain an anti-social minority’s control. By using new manipulation devices they can confuse massive populations in seemingly individual ways that feed into self obsessed, ego centered consumers of culture. Personal messages for individuals who are urged to share them almost without limits can be even more persuasive than older one-way mass broadcasting media. But even as they help bring people together texting, tweeting or twiddling in ways still not understood by most users of electronic devices, they offer advantages to controllers of this system taking an increasing toll on the planet and all it’s inhabitants. The time to heed the words of Morales has never been more urgent.

Present campaigns to militarily intervene in Syria and attack Iran are stress signs in a global economy wildly enriching fewer people while reducing greater majorities to indebtedness, warfare and poverty. Popular confusion is not only due to major corporate media but also to weapons of mass disinformation that can be sent directly into our heads by the new social media. And whether in the Middle East or the Middle West, suffering increases for many so that a few can live in luxury.

Palestinians continue to endure an apartheid settler state financed with massive tax payer aid from the American public, but no tweeted online miracle seems to bring that information into the personal lives of celebrities and millions of other people with no lives of their own but to follow celebrities.

Meanwhile, the supposed rebirth of the auto industry in the USA is entirely due to a tax payer financed public bailout of a private industry which has hired many new workers, but at half the wages of its old work force. In Tel Aviv , Detroit or Wall Street this is great for minority investors but it’s bad for a global majority. And that is how all alleged foreign threats and supposed recoveries in stock markets should be seen: they profit very few at enormous loss to the great majority and in doing so they increase danger to everyone’s future.

The American election will offer voters their usual choice of lesser evil and thereby guarantee continued evil, but needed social policies to transform reality will not be on the ballot. Calls for public banks, a maximum wage, a tax on wealth, health insurance for all, much more social spending and much less warfare waste, will continue to come from outside what is called mainstream politics but is really two wings of one corporate party representing minority capital. The  understandably angry majority, divided into a tea party, an occupy movement and mistaken identity groups, needs to ultimately find common ground in shaping a democracy that meets the needs of an entire population and not just a cabal of billionaires. That may seem impossible to people schooled in double standards, elitist division and contempt for others but most of them are neither believers in, nor can they ever be practitioners of, democracy. They support the minority rule of master race/chosen people doctrines with cosmetic language to cover that reality under a cloak of perverted democratic politics and the patriarchal religion of capitalist free markets.

Domination over public thinking is fading, even if not at a fast enough speed to assure a positive outcome. But once people gain control of their lives, their communities and their environment, progress can be achieved far more quickly than the regressive destruction that has taken so long to reveal its cause. What is most important is that democracy seekers not succumb to the terrible negativity of social doctrines that thrive on division, opposition, combat and profit for national minorities only at tremendous loss to the global majority.

This capitalist political economic disease has brought humanity to a point of no return, but one that also offers a road to a better world for all and not just some. That will take real democracy which isn’t something we murder foreigners to achieve but have to create in our own homelands by organizing and uniting with fellow citizens. This calls for more respect than we have been anti-socialized to give one another but once we realize individual freedom is not possible in isolation but only in community it may not be so difficult to achieve.

First, the talk of war must be stopped before it leads to actual war, and the power of minority money over the global system must be countered by the power of majority people. That will not happen as the result of a November election and certainly not by allowing social media to be used for anti-social purposes,  but it needs to happen soon.