Can Americans Who Oppose War and Empire Work Together?

Or will both sides generalize about the worst of the other and allow militarists to win?

Senator Lindsay Graham, a war supporting senator from South Carolina, said what he fears most is a left-right alliance against the Afghanistan War. He recognizes that such an alliance could stop war funding and force American troops to return home. But the masters of war may not have to use divide and rule tactics because many war opponents on both sides of the political spectrum seem too willing to divide themselves.

The recent war funding vote in Congress, while showing some progress in legislators voting against war, also showed that a left-only anti-war movement will never succeed in achieving its ends. The Democrats were divided but that was not enough. Despite broad opposition among Americans to the Afghan War, widespread evidence of its failure and leaks of tens of thousands of military documents showing that as bad as the war has been reported, it is worse; the Congress voted by a landslide to pour tens of billions into the failed war.

Anti-war activists should have learned from the build-up to the Iraq War that a left coalition is insufficient to stop a war. Record size demonstrations opposing the Iraq War were held throughout the country. And, even though it is easier to prevent a war than stop one, we failed. What lessons do we learn from the experience? Do we rebuild the same failed strategy or find another way?

What can Americans who oppose war, militarism and Empire do to change the course of the country? This is no easy task. The U.S. military is the strongest in world history and deeply embedded in the American psyche from its roots in Manifest Destiny, the Mexican War and war in the Philippines. The hubris of American Exceptionalism seems to block rationality. Today, the government keeps investing more and more borrowed dollars into making the world’s strongest military even stronger – something for which the leaders of both parties do not mind borrowing hundreds of billions. The U.S. keeps building its military despite spending as much as the whole world combined on weapons and war, even if it is at the expense of the rest of the U.S. economy.

And the U.S. Empire is far reaching, with more than a thousand military bases and outposts on all corners of the Earth. Yet, most Americans do not think of the United States as an empire. Euphemisms are used like – the U.S. is the policemen of the world – which falsely describe the U.S. role as a benevolent rather then self-serving one. The corporate media rarely mentions the word ‘empire’ when describing U.S. foreign policy thereby keeping most Americans unaware of this reality. Education across the political spectrum is needed.

Thus, the task of those who oppose the weapons and war policy of the United States is a great challenge. It is easy to get frustrated by the challenges of undoing America’s militarist foreign policy. But there are unique opportunities right now to confront the American war machine. The economy is in the worst shape it has been in decades and more see the direct connection of how military spending undermines the civilian economy. The public debt and deficit are at record highs in large part due to trillion dollar wars and record military budgets. The Iraq and Afghan wars, the opening rounds of what some describe as the multi-generational “long war,” are going poorly. And the already stretched to the breaking point military is seeing the potential of new wars in Iran, Pakistan, North Korea as well as Latin America and Africa. Thanks to Wikileaks and other sources more and more Americans see the ugly reality of U.S. war. This is an opportune time for peace activists to have an impact.

But so far we have been unable to take advantage of the opportunity. There are many obstacles for the peace movement, not of our own making, but some are our own fault. Too often those who oppose war and empire argue with each other rather than work together for peace. It is time to find areas where we can unite so that a strong American peace movement can develop, get the truth out about U.S. militarism and create a political environment where a paradigm shift away from weapons and war is possible.

It can be challenging for some anti-war activists on the left and the right to put aside prejudices even though none of us are the cardboard cutout stereotype that the other side sometimes imagines.

Recently I had the chance to participate in what I hoped would be a reasoned discussion of how to build a broad-based anti-war, pro-peace movement at a left leaning national peace conference. I participated in a panel entitled: “The Rise of Right Wing Populism and the Tea Party: Do we need a right-left antiwar coalition?” The panel was inspired in large part by my writing and organizing on the issue,  but, I should have known from the title that it would not be as useful a discussion as was needed.

The area of potential for a right-left alliance is with traditional conservatives whose opposition to war and empire goes back decades. These conservatives do not feel an alignment with the militarist neocons who dominate the Republican Party and most are curious observers of the Tea Party. They see neocons as destroyers of real conservatism and worry the Tea Party being co-opted by them. From the left perspective, if you do not want to reach out beyond those who already agree with you, it is much easier to create a straw man like the most extreme elements of the Tea Party as the focus of debate than to wrestle with the real question of forming a broad-based anti-war movement not limited to the “left.”

From the conservative side, labeling those on the left as socialists, Trotskyites, Maoists or whatever other red-bait label they want is the easy way to marginalize the “left wing” peace movement. Red baiting has been a decades long attack approach by the right. Rather than talking about specific issues and whether they are better handled by government or private industry, or whether employee ownership or co-operatives are more effective than capitalist ownership, just putting a red label on it is a way to avoid discussion.

My hope is that we are at the beginning of opening lines of respectful communication between those who oppose war and Empire, who want to see the military budget cut and re-investment in the U.S. economy. Unless we find a way to get anti-war advocates from all across the political spectrum working together we will never challenge American Empire.

While the American Empire is an empire in its own special American way, empires are not new, nor are ending them. E.P. Thompson, an influential British historian who was editor of the New Left Review wrote about the downfall of Rome and the importance of slave and peasant revolts: “Empires only fall because a sufficient number of people are sufficiently determined to make them fall, whether those people live inside or outside the frontier.”

It is time for those inside the American Empire to join together and demand its end: empire undermines the economy, weakens security, increases racial divisions, destroys the rule of law and creates failed democracies. Isn’t that enough to unite around?

Kevin Zeese co-directs Popular Resistance and is on the coordinating council for the Maryland Green Party. Read other articles by Kevin, or visit Kevin's website.

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  1. mary said on August 4th, 2010 at 8:37am #

    Fidel Castro gives us inspiration and pays tribute to Global Research –

    For 57 years, two generations of Cubans, the one that came before us and our own, which led both from January 1 to today, have fought against the most powerful empire humanity has ever known.

    I do not harbor the slightest fear of seeming to exaggerate; I say this with modesty, even embarrassment. It hurt to see how hundreds of millions of young people in the world were not even able to learn how to read and write, or are semi-illiterate, or do not have jobs, and are ignorant of everything related to the inalienable rights of human beings.

    A colossal crime is being committed against thousands of millions of adolescents and young people of both sexes, whose wonderful intelligence is manipulated by the mass media, and in fact, many of them, especially men, are turned into soldiers to die in unjust, genocidal wars carried out all over the planet.

    The economic system that has prevailed is incompatible with the interests of humanity. It must end and it will end.

    The new generations of young Cubans will make their message heard, the one born from their country’s experiences; they will fulfill a sacred duty imposed by the era in which it befell them to live. They will do so with humility, and brandishing the truth, without any stupid beliefs in racial or national superiority of any kind.

    I have asked myself many times, why do our children and adolescents have to die?

    Why do our young people have to die? Why does all this intelligence, where so many virtues could be implanted and cultivated, have to disappear?

    Why do their parents have to die in fratricidal wars?

    Imagine that the website Global Research deserves no credit at all; that the theory of Gregory Ryskin, a biochemical engineer at Northwestern University, regarding the methane bubble that article writer Terrence Aym associated with the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, deserves no attention at all, inviting us to sleep peacefully.

    The Global Research site published the only explanation possible for the sinking of the Cheonan, a sophisticated antisubmarine ship capable of detecting a ship of that type from 185 kilometers away. Obviously, it could not be sunk by an old, Russian-made submarine built more than 50 years ago.

    We prefer to cling to the hope that the arguments used in the “Reflection” to be published on Tuesday, August 3, fit reality.

    Otherwise, the other danger of a war breaking out, of immediately becoming a nuclear one, would be the only alternative, and therefore, this message will be more important than ever.

    There is not a chance of one in a thousand, in ten thousand, or any number you like, that the United States or Israel will drop the sanctions established by the United Nations Security Council, with strict time limits; nor is there one of Iran accepting the inspection of its ships.

    Even a blind man would see it is crystal clear.

    We will not surrender, nor will we allow the empire to deceive the world.

    Fidel Castro Ruz

    Powerful Message: There’s Still Hope for the World
    http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20409

  2. JoeJ said on August 4th, 2010 at 1:40pm #

    Sorry but this article is fanciful – it displays the problem of the intellectual anti-war movement. The article never mentions the role of the US Jewish people in these wars.

    The truth is that the anti-war movement is in shackles – slaves to the US Jewish.

    Look at this article – not one “Jewish” word – how can someone bemoan these wars and not talk about the US Jews and their role in starting and maintaining these evils?

    Is the intellectual anti-war movement a fraud – is its lack of courage the real problem – the real reason these wars go on and on?

    Will US intellectuals, in a chorus speak the truth – will they ever say “Jew.”

    Every article like this that refuses to speak the truth – only adds to the pro-war movement.

    By not telling the truth – the lie is advanced.

  3. lichen said on August 4th, 2010 at 6:44pm #

    That senator is deluded; we don’t live in a democracy, and the system will co-opt, deceive, and otherwise do anything to continue on it’s same path regardless of a “left-right alliance.” Global research into man-made global warming finds that it is real, it is happening, and those who oppose it are corporate oil/gas/coal shills. Fidel Castro understands that.

  4. Don Hawkins said on August 5th, 2010 at 3:13pm #

    Oh it’s happening alright and now happening much faster than first thought.

    While cloud cover obscures some areas, it is clear that the old ice floe has broken up into many smaller floes. Whether this old ice will completely melt out by the end of summer will depend to some extent on weather conditions. However, smaller floes melt more easily than consolidated ice. This behavior is becoming more typical of the ice pack as the ice thins. NSIDC

    http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png

  5. Don Hawkins said on August 5th, 2010 at 3:25pm #

    Old ice new ice below pretty well sums it up. This coming winter let’s see how it goes as high pressure could be the norm for awhile warmer ocean and our winters here in the States rather cold and freak storms depends on a few factors could just be above normal temperatures although normal temperatures is probably the wrong way to put it the new normal.

    http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100804_Figure4.png

  6. teafoe2 said on August 5th, 2010 at 4:01pm #

    To start with, I’d like to return the focus of discussion to Zeese’s thesis. (lisp lisp:)

    A question for Mr Z: was the “peace conference” you attended the same one Andrew Pollack attended and reported on in Palestine Chronicle today? Let me see if I can pull up that email without erasing this… that would be the United National Antiwar Conference, aka UNAC?

    I tried opening the link you provided, but all I got was a video of some blond woman at a podium talking into a mike. Nothing to ID the conference. I don’t have time to listen to people run on so I closed the page.

    I confess I’m a “typehead”, since I can read whatever’s said at least twenty times faster than it can be said orally.

    Another question: were you one of the people who encouraged Ralph Nader to “reach out to the right” and turn major responsibilities in his 2004 campaign over to “professionals” employed by the racist Reform Party?

    If you were at the UNAC, I’m surprised that you didn’t note the dissolution of the UFPJ. To me that major development seems to go counter to your advice to “softpedal” demands you think might be too radical for your rightwing friends. The lesson I take from it is that those who insisted on including the Palestine issue were right all along, and those like the UFPJers who kept whining that inclusion of demands related to Palestinian rights would “narrow the movement” were dead wrong.

    From where I sit, my first reaction is that your plea to reach out to these “conservative” elements is a formula for taking a lot of asps to our activist bosom. My research into the origins of the “tea party” along with a lot of info posted here on DV has caused me to drop my original “give them benefit of the doubt” take on the TP crowd. Since it turns out that the whole thing was staged by the usual rightwing suspects, my take now is “to hell with ’em”.

    So what kind of “joint operations” are you proposing? Are you suggesting some sort of cooperation in the Electoral Arena? Do you mean we should support Ron Paul for Prez? Or just what do you have in mind. ??

    And let me echo JoeJ: what IS your take on the Zionist Power Configuration aka “the Lobby”, and on Jewish power in the US electoral process? and in the “antiwar” movement in general?

    Do you agree with J Hammond et al that Noam Chomsky is the second coming of G. Zuzz K. Ryst? No? Please clarify?

  7. Roger Tucker said on August 5th, 2010 at 7:41pm #

    I would like to suggest that the idea of joining forces between the anti-war and anti-empire Left and Right does indeed point the way to the only possible solution to the current toxic quagmire. Moreover, as other commenters have already implied, the other qualification for participation would be anti-zionism. These three “anti’s” overlap so much that we might have to come up with a term that encompasses all three, and that suggests something that is positive, rather than simply against this, that or the other.

    What I’m leading up to is a third party that could conceivably bring down the corpocracy (or whatever one chooses to call it), a third party that embraces universal principles, best represented perhaps by the one spiritual and humanistic principle that underlies any and all visions of a good and workable society, the Golden Rule.

    If one ignores the two-headed hydra currently running the show, aka the Republicrats, we can easily discern that all of the disparate alternative political movements in the US have much the same outlook on what would be America’s proper role in the world. The trick would be in agreeing to disagree about secondary concerns, which are largely knee-jerk and ideological.

    I propose the formation of an Alliance Party, consisting of socialists, progressives, Libertarians, genuine Conservatives, the Green Party, Naderites, even the anarchists of both left and right persuasions. All of these, and some others, have far more in common than one might suppose.

    I would very much like to see a discussion of such a proposal.

  8. Deadbeat said on August 5th, 2010 at 10:45pm #

    Roger Tucker writes …

    I propose the formation of an Alliance Party, consisting of socialists, progressives, Libertarians, genuine Conservatives, the Green Party, Naderites, even the anarchists of both left and right persuasions. All of these, and some others, have far more in common than one might suppose.

    The problem is this coalition won’t hold. The Green Party, Naderites, progressives and socialist are not credible allies confronting Zionism and the Alliance Party, Libertarians, and genuine Conservatives are not anti-Capitalists. In a word — we’re FUCKED!

  9. Roger Tucker said on August 5th, 2010 at 10:58pm #

    Deadbeat, your comment is an example of what I meant by “The trick would be in agreeing to disagree about secondary concerns, which are largely knee-jerk and ideological.” A protocol would have to established to put such concerns on the back burner while matters of much more immediate concern were addressed in a common platform. I think it could be done.

    BTW, I forgot to mention the Tea Party folks – I think that many of them might be interested, particularly the Ron Paul fans.

    Anyone else care to comment on this idea?

  10. Deadbeat said on August 6th, 2010 at 12:14am #

    No offense Roger, I was being flippant. I think the more serious problem is the Left’s embrace of Zionism more than the Right’s embrace of Capitalism. Yes this is ideological and extremely serious. There are two major issues confronting us — Zionism and Capitalism. Those who seriously want to change society for the better needs to understand where they overlap and where they separate.

  11. Deadbeat said on August 6th, 2010 at 2:53am #

    Roger Tucker writes…

    “The trick would be in agreeing to disagree about secondary concerns, which are largely knee-jerk and ideological.

    Roger you’ve got to realize the fallacy in your thinking. If you’ve been following the Hammond v. Blankfort thread you’ll see how screwed up and RETARDED the Left is today.

    The Left will sabotage your coalition because the Right is typically outspoken against Zionism. The liberal-Zionist Jews on the Left will label your the right-flank as “racists” and “White Nationalists” to scare Blacks and to keep them from joining your coalition. You’ve got to understand how powerfully embedded Zionism is on the Left.

    The Right also needs to understand that Capitalism works AGAINST the interest of working class whites. I certainly have no interest in supporting a system that exploits working class people. So Roger IDEOLOGY is key to building a coalition that can change the system. Also Roger you want to be fighting FOR something rather than simply be on the defensive. Like in football Roger it is the OFFENSE that win games. And your advocacy can only be defensive and REACTIONARY rather than proactive and RADICAL for it to remain cohesive.

    So I’m sorry Roger but the situation is so cancerous that the only cure is having the proper analysis to fully understand the current situation in order to devise and derive the proper strategy.

  12. Deadbeat said on August 6th, 2010 at 3:02am #

    Kevin Zeese writes …

    It is time for those inside the American Empire to join together and demand its end: empire undermines the economy, weakens security, increases racial divisions, destroys the rule of law and creates failed democracies. Isn’t that enough to unite around?

    I wouldn’t stick my neck out for anything Mr. Zeese advocates as he continue to keep his neck in the ground when it comes to the Zionists hold of the Left. There is nothing in his article that mentions this reality.

    Also Mr. Zeese advocacy for single payer health care — without any analysis of lack of housing commodification displays the utter DISCONNECT in his thinking. Having shelter, good food, water, and MONEY is more important to good HEALTH than seeing a QUACK doctors making profits pushing pharmaceuticals. The “single payer” movement is ALL about protecting the bourgeois Liberal/Left assets and not about equality and justice.

    It’s high time for Mr. Zeese to get serious and stop his flirtations with the margins.

  13. Don Hawkins said on August 6th, 2010 at 4:12am #

    Well it look’s like China is getting there wish I saw pictures yesterday of traffic in China yes they are on there way. Being a country boy I tried that whole drive on the freeway thing when I lived in a city and stop light’s was always’ strange to me. I watched the Oreilly show last night and he had on Beck those two have become let’s see what’s the word, punk’s not uncommon in old twenty ten. Is punk to strong of a word ok for profit nonsense where bad is good. The amazing part is knowing full well what’s coming down the track we boldly go where we have gone before. There is no battle just a whimper. Those pictures out of Russia just an anomaly one way to look at it. Here’s two way’s to look at it and what Arundhati Roy wrote well we hear much about this overweight part and let’s don’t stop there could be why we are destroying ourselves. Yes the Chinese people are getting there wish and they could have had a cup of coffee. We are trying oh no we are not people are giving up hence the strangeness spreading through out the land. Every person for themselves know your history. With the knowledge we now have say compared to the 17 th century I guess there is sort of a battle done of course in an air conditioned tent as we watch a few boldly go where we have gone before. The job’s numbers today well what are the true numbers Beck cracked me up last night he said People I know 2 and 2 is and then he paused and paused and said 4 and then he said I hope you will never say you or your kid’s that 2 and 2 is 5 or 7. Here of course is where a few will say yes 2 and 2 is 4 but sometimes that’s not how it work’s in the real world. Working is it.

    Our amazing intelligence seems to have outstripped our instinct for survival. We plunder the earth hoping that accumulating material surplus will make up for the profound, unfathomable thing that we have lost. Arundhati Roy
    If advanced spacefaring aliens exploit resources like humans we’d better hope they don’t find us anytime soon. Hawking

  14. kbzeese said on August 6th, 2010 at 5:39am #

    Interesting comments. A few responses.

    If you want to know my views on U.S. policy toward Palestine-Israel just google Zeese Israel. My views are not a secret! It is time for the U.S. to start cutting funds to Israel, stop providing weapons and political cover and time for Americans to boycott Israeli goods. The country violates the law every day and needs to be held accountable. I suspect we would find a lot of people on the right who agree with criticism of Israel.

    Forming a political party of people of disparate views is different from allying on an issue where we agree. I don’t see forming a political party with tea bag people or Ron Paul people as the differences are too significant on the role of government and the type of economy that would be most effective for meeting the necessities of the people. Working on an issue we agree on is a different matter. I don’t see the Tea Party as viable for even an issue-alliance as they seem to have been taken over by the neocons and traditional conservatives and are inconsistent in their views — small government but don’t cut the military budget — give me a break. This is one of many problems with their thinking.

    As to Nader turning over his operation to the Reform Party and right wingers, that is absolute fiction. I was Nader’s spokesperson and press secretary in 2004. He did take a few ballot lines from the Reform Party but that did not give them any control of the campaign. Ballot access is such a giant hurdle for a national campaign that you have to get on the ballot in many ways. Nader also sought the socialist Peace and Freedom ballot line in 2004 and received it in 2008. Nader ran his campaign and it was a progressive campaign on every issue. And, Nader is very strong on Palestine-Israel. In fact during the 2004 campaign we got into a political fight with the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League. The fight became very public. Indeed, the Washington Post described Ralph as the equivalent of a skinhead for his outspoken criticism of Israel.

    UFPJ continues to exist. It is weaker and less funded and less staffed but never had sufficient funds. They did a lot of good work for peace but my problem with them was they leaned toward the Democratic Party and that is a party that kills political movements. The peace movement almost died when “reporting for duty” Kerry ran and is still recovering from Obama. The peace movement needs to be an independent political force not tied to or leaning toward any political party.

  15. Don Hawkins said on August 6th, 2010 at 7:14am #

    As a result, Serenko continues, “the heat is changing Russia,” all the more so because Russians have been told that next year and the one after that may be even worse. What needs to begin happening, he suggests, is to “assess fully the extent of these changes” in order to predict what will happen next. Georgian daily

    “Assess fully the extent of these changes,” have we done that here in the States? Sort of and what conclusions did we come up with? Well you all might want to read this again.

    We need a simple honest flat rising carbon fee across the board. It should be revenue neutral – all funds distributed to the public – “100 percent or fight”. It is the only realistic path to global action. China and India will not accept caps, but they need a carbon fee to spur clean energy and avoid fossil fuel addiction.

    But our governments have no intention of solving the fossil fuel and climate problem, as is easy to prove: the United States, Canadian and Norwegian governments are going right ahead developing the tar sands, which, if it is not halted, will make it impossible to stabilize climate. Hansen

    http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2010/Sophie_20100722.pdf

    Just can’t think in terms of fighting this kind of like a war can we? Ok what needs to begin happening, he suggests, is to “assess fully the extent of these changes” in order to predict what will happen next. What’s that man’s name Rep Cantor I saw today on CNBC and how many more like him and the big question who help’s control his thinking? You know just on the off chance that’s true who are they? How about Democrats any difference?

  16. lichen said on August 6th, 2010 at 3:29pm #

    No, such an organization would certainly implode if people employed the insane antizionist ideological bs into it’s formation. Perhaps a new party should be about the US, the people living here, our concerns, as opposed to israel/palestine? How eletist, how pompous to assume that it’s fine to divide people on a largely abstract issue when we have our own concerns in this part of the world. However, the current laws and policies make it so that no third party can ever rise up and win; period. Unless you change our electoral system first (which would mean, further, that a left-right alliance would no longer be neccessary anyway) you will get nowhere.

  17. teafoe2 said on August 6th, 2010 at 4:50pm #

    Hold on there Zeese, some of what you say in this comment sounds pretty good, but you are offbase on a couple points.

    The Nader campaign hired a Reform Party guy to run the 2004 campaign in Northern Calif, who shortly after starting to work had to be fired because of the blatantly racist statements he’d posted on a blog he’d mistakenly assumed nobody but other Reform Pty racists would be visiting.

    Are you saying he was the ONLY Reform Party operative hired to take on a responsible post in Nader’s campaign that year? Since you occupied such a central position in that campaign, can you tell us the exact number of persons the campaign hired whose previous experience was in the Perot organization?

    Please provide details if you actually have them, because I have firsthand knowledge of some of this, and I don’t buy what you’ve offered so far.

    I didn’t say Nader had turned his campaign over to the Reform Party, I said he’d turned major responsibilities in it over to Reform Party professionals. In my opinion, running the Northern California region qualifies as a major responsibility, given that “Norcal” is one of the prime bases of support for any “Third Party” effort of any kind.

    So don’t tell me what I say is fiction, because it isn’t.

    The other point is about your statement that “UFPJ” still exists. Your assertion is in direct contradiction to what was reported by Andrew Pollack, who was present at the UNAC conference, in an article I received in the Palestine Chronicle newsletter yesterday. Wait a minute, I’ll post this much, go find the article & post the portion of it dealing with UFPJ…

  18. teafoe2 said on August 6th, 2010 at 5:04pm #

    from Palestine Chronicle, 11:40 07/31/2010
    Palestine Takes Center Stage in the Antiwar Movement
    By Andrew Pollack – New York

    The United National Antiwar Conference, attended by 850 people from July 23 to 25, 2010 in Albany, New York, marked a sea change in the attitude of the antiwar movement toward Palestine. For the first time a broadly representative, democratic national conference of peace activists adopted the demand “End All US Aid to Israel.” UNAC also endorsed the global BDS movement, committed itself to joining Palestine solidarity efforts around future flotillas, emergency responses to Zionist attacks, etc., and expressed its opposition to the US’s many-faceted complicity in Zionism’s various crimes. All of these positions were adopted in near-unanimous votes and in the face of attempts by a handful of delegates to water down or obstruct them.///SNIP

    content deleted as not germane to present discussion…

    UNSNIP: “A few months ago, the biggest US antiwar coalition, United For Peace and Justice, voted to dissolve itself as a coalition and continue only as an informal network. As a result, the Assembly called for a United National Antiwar Conference to involve as many former UFPJ affiliates as possible as well as to involve all the forces which had operated outside UFPJ.”
    SNIP

    To me, an “informal network” does not qualify as an existing entity unless there is somebody who still uses “UFPJ” as a public identity.

  19. JoeJ said on August 6th, 2010 at 5:34pm #

    “Road to hell is paved with good intentions” — Israehell!

  20. Deadbeat said on August 6th, 2010 at 5:42pm #

    @ teafoe2

    What’s your take about the dissolution of UFPJ and the Albany UNAC? Should it be embraced or approached with caution? Clearly the statement of ending all U.S. aid to Israel and supporting BDS are positive developments.

  21. teafoe2 said on August 6th, 2010 at 6:22pm #

    DB, did you read the whole article by Pollack? Everything I saw looked very positive.

    Both about UNAC and Pollack himself. Maybe the most positive development he reported was the repudiation by UNAC of an attempt by the USLAW delegate to get the main resolution watered down by removing reference to the Palestine issue, on the grounds that it was “divisive”, would narrow the base of support because some elements dear to USLAW’s heart wouldn’t participate, etc etc.

    USLAW has been a pain in the keister for several years, talking a good game in some respects but AWOL when push comes to AIPAC. Blankfort had some interesting things to say about his experiences with them when he was trying to organize the Labor Committee on the ME, I think it was called, been several years now. “Labor Bulletin on the Middle East”? “Middle East Labor Bulletin”? Memory not so hot:(

    But from the text of what UNAC adopted they look okay to me. None of the names were familiar, which is a good omen far as I’m concerned.

    In contrast to what’s going on in the CA P&F Party, which indeed did give their nomination for Pres to Nader last time. I’ve been a P&F member on and off since Bob Scheer ran for Mayor of Berkeley, got conned into registering Dumbo so I could work in the Rainbow organizing, reregistered Green in 2K to support Nader, unregistered in 2004 when that Texas used car salesman Cobb took over the GP, & supported Nader/Camejo. Right after that P&F’s ballot status was under threat so I joined back up with them, but got into a beef with their head honcho John Reiger when he started telling me I was making too big a thing out of AIPAC so dropped out, registered GP again to support Cynthia McKinney in 2008.

    I hope she gets back into things, you know her father died which affected her a great deal, they were close, he was her hero and role model, for standing up to Jim Crow in Atlanta etc. Right now she’s doing some kind of coast to coast Bike Ride which seems to be keeping her out of touch with some things.

    Interesting straw in wind: Cindy Sheehan is now a P&F County Committee member, City & County of SF. Where she is joined by Richard Becker and Gloria La Riva of PSL.

    Periodically various “democratic centralism” outfits have decided to make a move on P&F, have joined en masse, taken over the State Central Cmte etc etc. I think but could be wrong, that the ISO was once heavily infiltrated into P&F. Some kind of International Trokstyike party with a similar name maybe? ISO the last time I looked was doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the CA Green Pty. “Trotskies, Trotskies everywhere, nor any drop to think”:) I’m kidding, it just seems that way sometimes:) Some of my best friends are Trostkyisks:)

  22. kbzeese said on August 6th, 2010 at 7:11pm #

    I was pleased with the Albany conference resolution on Palestine Israel. It is important to be consistent in opposition to militarism and occupation as well as not violating international law.

    Teafoe2 — not sure what your points are. Your own posting points out the Reform guy was fired when he got off the Nader path. If any other Reform folks were hired they also had to stick with Nader’s views. Nader was in control of the campaign not the Reform Party.

    Similarly on your point on UFPJ, they are continuing as an informal coalition. They continue to put out alerts to their list. Indeed, they just put one out about an event at Quantico to support Bradley Manning. So, they are still taking action.

    KZ

  23. Deadbeat said on August 6th, 2010 at 11:31pm #

    TF2,

    I checked my inbox and read the release. What I saw promising from the release …

    To address these crimes, the Caucus’s main demands were: End U.S. aid to Israel – military, economic, and diplomatic. End U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the blockade of Gaza.

    A campaign to end aid to Israel and to educate the public about Israel’s apartheid are a major steps forward for the Left.

    Thanks!

  24. teafoe2 said on August 7th, 2010 at 11:53am #

    DB,

    I guess I must have missed earlier reports on the Albany conference. I just saw a long piece by J Raimundo on Antiwar.com, July 30, which mentioned K Zeese as one of the featured speakers, along with Glen Ford who Raimundo subjected to a thorough trashing. Let me find the link to the piece & post it…

    I thought the first parts were pretty good, mostly just reporting facts, but later when Raimundo starts expressing his conclusions it got a little offensive, “IMHO”.

    Raimundo is a very interesting figure. He does a lot of research. His report on the rise of Dick Cheney is fact-filled. BTW, those wishing to argue that Cheney was a representative of Oil interests when he was helping plot and pushing the invasion of Iraq would be on solider ground if they noted Cheney’s close ties to energy firms based in Wyoming.

    But the key to Cheney’s meteoric ascent is his association with Strauss-disciple Wolfowitz.

    You can’t really begin to comprehend why US policies have taken the turn they have without taking a good long look at Strauss and his theories.

    Raimundo runs down in detail the metamorphosis of the Neo-Con ideologists from ultraleft Trotskyism all the way to the far right and Likudism. Fascinating stuff, explains a lot. But what needs to be focussed on IMO is the connections between figures like Cheney and Rumsfeld, goys all, Methodist bkgrnds etc, and A) Organized Zionism, & B) Straussian philosophy/ideology and its proponents such as Wolfowitz and others.

    Strauss was a declared Zionist. Zionism formed the basis of his beliefs formed during his early life in “Israel”, which he later elaborated with a lot of Philosophy Dept. erudition. He DID know the subject at a level so high that few could dispute him since they lacked the background.

    Except that if you back up and take a birdseye view of his activity and it’s effects, it’s clear that he’s one of the major Zionist figures of all time. He must be seen as the number one architect of the ZPC takeover of the US Imperial policy-making process. Second place might go to the late troskyisk Schactman, but that is up for debate.

    Oops, forgot to go get that link, con permiso…

  25. teafoe2 said on August 7th, 2010 at 11:57am #

    This isn’t the link I was looking for, but worth checking out for the info on Strauss etc.:

    Antiwar.com Original – http://original.antiwar.com

    The Imperial Delusion

    Posted By Justin Raimondo On September 16, 2005 @ 12:00 am In Uncategorized | No Comments

    Editor’s note: Today’s column is based on a speech delivered at Colorado College on Sept. 15, sponsored by the Robert and Janet Manning Endowed Fund for Political Science and the political science department.

    Why are we in Iraq? ///SNIP

  26. teafoe2 said on August 7th, 2010 at 1:00pm #

    Continuing the conversation with “KZ”, he posts: “Teafoe2 — not sure what your points are. Your own posting points out the Reform guy was fired when he got off the Nader path. If any other Reform folks were hired they also had to stick with Nader’s views. Nader was in control of the campaign not the Reform Party.”

    The point is that Nader was either so dumb, ill-informed, or unconcerned about linking his fortunes to a bunch of racists that he chickened out from challenging that Texas used-car salesman Cobb for leadership of the Green Party and instead tried to replace the campaign infrastructure supplied in 2K by the GP by “reaching out” to the closet Republicans posing as the “Reform Party”. Nader and retainers totally mishandled the 2004 campaign, one bad decision after another. And did it again in 08.

    So I hope he has enough sense not to pull another Stassen in 2012.

  27. Roger Tucker said on August 7th, 2010 at 1:05pm #

    I am disappointed, but hardly surprised, to see that the commenters on this thread are more interested in promoting their particular ideological viewpoints than helping to point the way to breaking the logjam. Sometimes too much knowledge is the greatest obstacle to wisdom.

    If there is going to be some sort of alliance that can get on the ballot and confront the Republicrats it will come about only through a conference among the disparate individuals and groups opposed to Zionism, war and the other depradations of the Empire and are committed to the promotion of a sane world. I do not see any other way forward except revolution, which might well turn out to be worse than doing nothing.

    I therefore humbly suggest that we communicate directly with the various people and organizations who would form the core of such an effort. Let’s invite Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney (and or another representative of the Green Party), Cindy Sheehan, Medea Benjamin, Pat Buchanan, Chris Hedges, Gordon Duff, Paul Craig Roberts and a few others to sit down together and discuss the possibility, with the proviso that ideologies of the right or left be checked at the door.

    If you are at all interested in helping to set up such a meeting, please get in touch with me:

    Roger Tucker
    ten.knilhtraenull@14rekcutr
    http://onestate.info

  28. teafoe2 said on August 7th, 2010 at 3:59pm #

    Pat Buchanan? you’re kidding. At least I hope you’re kidding…

    Dennis Kucinich: will never break away from the Dumbock-rat party. He says a lot of the right things but when push comes to shove there he is up on stage holding hands with Obama & friends. In early 2008 a Liberal Peacenik I knew talked me into attending a handful of Kucinich events. What a farce: psychedelic reader’s digest. The real head of the N Calif Kucinich campaign turned out to be longtime DSA honcho Duane Campbell, whose main committment was all along to Obamania.

    The real obstacle to any “left-right” coalition… I should say obstacles, there are two big ones: First, there isn’t any genuine Left in the US to speak of at this point; two, the “antiwar conservatives” (sic) aren’t interested. The only people who keep pushing the left-right coalition hype are people like Zeese and the right-leaning GP member who got an article posted here on DV about how we shouldn’t call the Teabaggers teabaggers because it would hurt their feelings.

    Initially I thought he might have had a point, so I made a point of disassociating myself from the epithet “teabagger”. I hadn’t tumbled to the sexual connotations until the GPer explained, but when I did get it I thought it unappropriate, if these were some people we might be able to coalition with at some point.

    Then I went and did a little googling of Tea Party, opened a few of the pages that came up, got acquainted with the history of the “movement”, where its backing came from etc. So now “teabagger” is more polite than what comes to my mind when you mention that particular swindle.

    I wonder, Mr Tucker, if you read any of the J Raimundo article I posted above? Did you notice his comments about Social Security being a leftwing sectarian plot? How he ridiculed anyone who favored universal healthcare?

    The truth is, these “America Firsters” aren’t interested in any coalitioning with people to their left. If they were, they wouldn’t be so free with the insults.

  29. teafoe2 said on August 7th, 2010 at 4:02pm #

    DB: now that I see that Chomsky was one of the main speakers at the UNAC event, along with Glen Ford, I’m reevaluating my take on Pollack’s article and the entire proceeding. My recommendation: keep your powder dry, wait for more developments…

  30. Aaron Aarons said on August 10th, 2010 at 11:05am #

    While there has been and still is a tendency on the left to ignore the particular role of Jewish capitalists in influencing both U.S. Middle East policy and the left’s response to Middle East issues in particular, it is absurd to suggest that the U.S. wouldn’t be an Empire if it weren’t for the Zionists/the Jews. The anglophone Christian equivalent of the Zionist settler colony in Palestine existed in North America long before George Washington was born, and over 200 years before the invention of political zionism.
    What makes the U.S. necessarily imperialist is that its per capita levels of material consumption are way beyond what can be sustained without the looting of much of the world outside its borders. So, the U.S. will continue to be an imperialist looter of the planet until either (1) there is not much planet left to loot, (2) the U.S. is destroyed as a military, economic and political entity as we know it, or (3) there is a social revolution in the U.S. that eliminates the privileged classes and lets the rest of the population live lives not based on unnecessary consumption. Unfortunately, alternative #3 is unlikely to happen until the ability of the U.S. to continue its looting, and therefore keep much of its own working class comfortable, is seriously weakened by outside forces and its own contradictions.

  31. PatrickSMcNally said on August 10th, 2010 at 11:31am #

    > While there has been and still is a tendency on the left to ignore the particular role of Jewish capitalists in influencing both U.S. Middle East policy and the left’s response to Middle East issues in particular, it is absurd to suggest that the U.S. wouldn’t be an Empire if it weren’t for the Zionists/the Jews… What makes the U.S. necessarily imperialist is that its per capita levels of material consumption are way beyond what can be sustained without the looting of much of the world outside its borders.

    That’s quite true. While I don’t in the least bit expect (at the moment) that Obama is going to invade Iran, if this should occur then it will unquestionably correspond to the influence of the Israel lobby. However the current course of seeking to fund a color revolution in Iran is perfectly explicable without making any mention of the Israel lobby. Zbigniew Brzrzinski, a traditional imperialist who has had past tensions with the Israel lobby, is most certainly an advocate of the color revolution strategy in Iran. I don’t at all believe that Brzezinski would have invaded Iraq if the decisions in 2002-3 had been up to him to make. But he most certainly would have worked to bring about something like what had been engineered in Ukrainia and Georgia.

  32. teafoe2 said on August 10th, 2010 at 11:39am #

    who is it that maintains that the US wouldn’t be an empire except for the zionists? sounds like something you might find on RebelNews or some crackpot religious fanatic site. ??

    BTW, it might be of interest to note that the Jewish presence in what became the US dates from 1654 when a group of refugees from Vatican persecution were invited to settle in Protestant-only New England because it was thought that their “financial sector” skills and contacts would be useful to the nascent but locally dominant capitalist classes.

    Jewish finance has played an important role in US capitalist expansion ever since, but only in the last few decades has it begun to assume its present vital importance.

  33. PatrickSMcNally said on August 10th, 2010 at 12:31pm #

    > Jewish finance has played an important role in US capitalist expansion ever since, but only in the last few decades has it begun to assume its present vital importance.

    I’d say that that sentence sort of combines two distinct phenomenon that are worth defining separately.

    First of all, it’s a clear fact that from the 1970s onward the US economy shifted away from the older emphasis on industrial manufacturing and services over to a finance-driven economy. This occurred because industry had overgrown to a point where the rate of profit was declining and so rich people seeking to invest their wealth began to move away from consumer industries and over to financial speculations. Lenin made the point long ago that capitalism in its overdeveloped stages tends towards a preponderance of finance-capital. The truth of that was blurred for several decades after WWII because of the incredible innovations in industry brought about by the reconstruction of the world economy after 1945. By the 1970s Lenin’s old arguments began reasserting themselves.

    Second, during the course of the Cold War there was a pressure placed upon the upper classes of the West to break down older forms of racial quotas in order to avoid the appearance that there was anything insincere about the “defense of liberty” in the Cold War. Everyone learns in school about how the Jim Crow laws were removed. What is less well known is that during the 1960s many Jews who had previously been excluded from important places saw these cultural barriers drop and they began moving into upward throttle on the career ladder. By the 1970s one could mark the beginning of a distinctive shift in who was taking over what positions and how were the resulting decisions being made.

    These are actually two separate phenomena, and it helps keep them each clearly identified.

  34. Deadbeat said on August 10th, 2010 at 12:32pm #

    @ TF2

    Thanks for pointing me in the direction of antiwar.com. I really haven’t spent much time reading their views and I just read Raimondo’s commentary on why the antiwar movement is stalled. His answer is the left. I agree with his conclusion but I think how he arrived to that conclusion is open for debate. Missing in his analysis is how Zionism affects the Left. His explanation seemed to say that Left-wing “sectarianism” is the problem and that turf battles is what is preventing a Left/Right anti-war coalition.

    Also he makes a terse complaint of Glen Ford labeling the Paul/Tea Party faction as “racist”. And the presence of Medea Benjamin and Kevin Zeese at the Albany conference.

    I think we need to more open to views the Libertarian perspective because Libertarians tend to be fact based in their arguments but they have a tendencies to take those facts and bend them into the conclusions they want to hear. I’ve spent years debating Libertarians and IMO are not “racist white nationalists” as Glen Ford labeled them. His labeling is either a misunderstanding or a deliberate smear. But Ford did a similar mislabeling of African American supporters of Obama in 2008 which I’ve criticized here on DV. These are an obvious “yellow” flags. I suggest proceeding with caution.

    I’m concluding that the real fear of the “Left” of the Libertarian is not their stance on Capitalism but the fact that the Libertarians are not largely corrupted by Zionism. The “Left” cannot control the debate nor the outcomes with Libertarians.

    Another point that Raimondo misses why the Left succeeded in the 60’s and why it is not in the Left’s interest to be a strong anti-war movement. He says it was the Left’s desire to stick to a single issue. That might of worked in the 60’s but the today’s Capitalist crisis is a huge issue that has to be woven into the anti-war movement. You cannot deal with single issues anymore. The view has to be systemic and the two main issue of today are Zionism and Capitalism. Getting people on the same page here is problematic because you’re going to be attacked from the Left (Zionism) and the Right (Capitalism).

  35. Deadbeat said on August 10th, 2010 at 12:37pm #

    PSMcNally writes …

    These are actually two separate phenomena, and it helps keep them each clearly identified.

    Excellent analysis. It explains Jewish participation in the Civil Rights and women movements. It was much more out of self-interest than to help Black folks which is often how it is presented.

  36. teafoe2 said on August 10th, 2010 at 3:05pm #

    I agree with in general with both P McN & DB, but diverge on some pts. Task for me is to decide which I can let pass and which demand a response.

    My remark about US Jews and US capitalism was very general, intended to (hopefully) pique reader curiousity & get some to delve deeper into the history I sketched.

    Re the admonition “These are actually two separate phenomena…” etc, the notion of “separate phenomena” smacks of Immanuel Kant and Karl Popper, empiricism & pragmatism. The dialectic approach favored by Marx. Lenin and Mao Zedong (whose pamphlet “On Contradiction” could be of immense help to many of today’s antiwar activists)seeks to identify and understand the ways that seemingly “separate and distinct” phenomena actually interpenetrate each other.

    From my admittedly limited reading of the history, sociology and economics of the ZPC in the US and its powerbase, the “Jewish Community”, and my understanding of the dynamics of US de-industrialization, it looks to me like both phenomena are inextricably intertwined.

    Looking at the zioimperialist state apparatus, we can identify different aspects, but they are ASPECTS, (sorry for CAPS, no way to underline/italicize on DV), aspects of a single totality, not separate entities entirely independent of each other.

    As I see it, there were multiple motivating factors which led to the exporting of the US manufacturing sector and the rise to dominance of the FIRE and closely linked sectors such as Media and Pharma. The search for better returns on investment was only one of them.

    Is it a coincidence that most of the sectors that have dramatically declined are the ones in which Jewish investment was for so long discouraged? Is it a coincidence that it was after it became clear that US youth raised in the relative ease of “Ike’s in the White House, all’s well with the world” suburban security couldn’t be counted on to defend the “National Interest” in Vietnam, that efforts to maintain and extend Great Society programs lost favor?

    In the “Inner City” circles where I found myself during most of the seventies, it was commonly accepted that there was a planned strategy to “Thirdworldize” the lower strata of US Society, as a way of preventing the emergence of viable resistance movements.

    Maybe the theory on which this view was based was incorrect, but since things did turn out exactly that way, it seems worth considering how grassroots people arrived at such a prescient take on it…

    Hmm, well I hope these quibbles don’t discourage anybody from studying what Marx and Lenin, or Wm Z Foster –remember him? — said about trends in capitalist development. A background in their thought is really the starting point, the indispensable starting point for gaining an understanding of what’s going on in the world.

    My point is that you have to consider all this stuff carefully, and avoid accepting any prepackaged catechism that purports to have all the answers. An enormous literature exists on all this. What one expert or school of experts offers is contradicted by other schools and experts. Z Mag says one thing, Monthly Review another, PSL still another, DSA another, on and on. Nowadays from the CPUSA you get what Wm. Z would have called Second International Garbage:)

  37. teafoe2 said on August 10th, 2010 at 3:23pm #

    I had in mind, when I posted the comments Patrick felt needed clarification, the question “what explains the phenomenal degree of Jewish success and achievement in the USA”?

    This is a question that in recent years has begun to be discussed openly by Jewish scholars and writers, and the discussions posted online where any goy can google them. Reading these studies and analyses you can start to gain a degree of insight into how it is possible for intelligent well-educated US Jewish professionals to support the insanity the vast majority of them do.

    My reading indicates that the reasons why Jews as a group do so well in America, and why they continue to support Israel and the ZPC in the US, aka “the Lobby”, are inextricably intertwined. Analysis must begin with the Torah, known among Christians as “the Pentateuch”, the first five books of the “Old Testament”.

  38. teafoe2 said on August 10th, 2010 at 3:33pm #

    But the presence in America from the beginning, of a group of highly affluent and influential Jewish financiers, is clearly a factor contributing to the rapid assimilation and upward mobility of succeeding waves of Jewish immigrants.

    Combine that fact with behavior patterns and social outlooks embedded in Jewish customs and personal psychologies by the Rabbinic traditions, going back to Yiddishophone Eastern Europe and before that to Judaic scholars and priests of the several “Galuts”, Diasporas to various parts of the planet, it becomes understandable how something like the “Return to Zion” cult can have such an appeal to so many.

    But I’ve just scratched the surface, so don’t take my word for it, research it for yourself.

  39. PatrickSMcNally said on August 10th, 2010 at 3:42pm #

    > it looks to me like both phenomena are inextricably intertwined.

    That’s a bit vague. If intertwined as living phenomena, surely one would expect such in some sense. But if that were taken to mean that placing more WASPs in positions of management would have allowed the USA to remain in the same position as industrial leader of the world which it held for two decades after WWII, then I don’t see how that could be.

    > Is it a coincidence that most of the sectors that have dramatically declined are the ones in which Jewish investment was for so long discouraged?

    Well, to take something very specific, it is indisputably the case that the automobile industry would have had to decline simply because the world today produces too many cars. Nothing about the auto industry as it once functioned could ever have been sustained. Markets either become overswollen or else the attempt to sustain the market leads to a wasteful practice of building in limited lifespans to the product. No matter how it’s approached, this is something which must result in a crisis of capitalism regardless of whether or not Jews are permitted to hold certain positions. Many other examples run throughout the whole economy.

    > Is it a coincidence that it was after it became clear that US youth raised in the relative ease of “Ike’s in the White House, all’s well with the world” suburban security couldn’t be counted on to defend the “National Interest” in Vietnam, that efforts to maintain and extend Great Society programs lost favor?

    Probably not entirely. But I don’t really see any reason to believe that the stagflation which burst on the scene in the early 1970s was caused by anyone’s planned conspiracy. That is better explained as a consequence of overproduction. Keynesian theory had always taught that injecting more money into an economy could spur economic recovery, but this was always conditional upon the assumption that a real opportunity for capitalist profit through increased production would eventually emerge. Stagflation reflected the fact that production was so great that pumping money into the economy no longer resulted in a rapid enough investment to compensate for job losses. The significance of that would have been more permanent than any single policy response aimed at forcing college students to join the army.

    > Z Mag says one thing,

    From my experience, ZMag usually gave an accent to the “policy response” perspective which views the reversal of the Great Society as a response to antiwar protests. ZMag actually tends to scorn Marxist analysis of capitalism as a system destined for decline.

  40. teafoe2 said on August 10th, 2010 at 4:09pm #

    Thank you Patrick for responding. It’s a pleasure to run across somebody to discuss this stuff with.

    Z Mag: I just included them to fill out a series of examples. Haven’t actually opened Z for years since I got into a beef with Albert. Who doesn’t know the wrong end of his alimentary canal from the place where the WTC used to be:) But some DV readers might benefit from exposure to his Parecon scheme? Richard Oxman perhaps? hehe:)

    “…the automobile industry would have had to decline simply because the world today produces too many cars.”

    hmm, what about the entry of the Japanese carmakers into the previously US monopolized auto market?

    After WWII, Japan was economically prostrate. But somebody decided to invest heavily in the Japanese auto industry. As I remember, Toyotas started showing up just about the time of the Six Day War and the Summer of Love:)

    No, I’m not suggesting a cause & effect. Unless “synchronicity” is a word derived from Ivrit? But a closer look at the mechanism of US jumpstarting the Japanese auto industry might reveal more of a connection than I can document offhand…

    Just to be clear, I wasn’t talking about “Jews being allowed to hold positions”, unless you meant positions in bonds and equities? I had in mind the capacity to invest, or/and the ability to direct investment of others, such as pension funds and union dues, funds accumulated by national Protestant & Catholic church organizations, the Knights of Columbus, various convents and sister or brotherhoods…

  41. PatrickSMcNally said on August 10th, 2010 at 4:20pm #

    > Analysis must begin with the Torah, known among Christians as “the Pentateuch”, the first five books of the “Old Testament”.

    In my own considered opinion I’d have to say that the connection of the fates of the USA and Jews/Israel/Zionism through World War II is more pertinent than anything from the Torah. Historically we know that the more upwardly mobile Jews in Europe tended to be those who put things like the Torah and Talmud away in the closet and more often considered themselves as nonreligious. Only the creation of Israel enabled the formation of a new type of identity whereby Jews were able to very forthrightly define themselves as Jews without simply burying themselves in the ghettoes away from civilization as Torah Jews in eastern Europe had done.

    What really created the bonding we see today between USAian and Jewish identities was the role which World War II played in the regeneration of both. You’ve mentioned William Z. Foster. Foster was one of many people, including James Patrick Cannon (leader of the then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party) who expected that the Great Depression would reassert itself after World War II. Lots of people from different political perspectives had been convinced that the Depression would return and then the old political lines which were forming in the 1930s would revive.

    It didn’t turn out that way. Instead the economy which came out of that war gave the USA a quarter-century of ever-rising prosperity whose effects are still with us today when it’s clear that relative economic decline has been in force for a long while. If that war had been followed 11 years later with something like the Great Crash of 1956 (as was World War One) then all of society’s views of that era would be very different. Right-wingers like Elizabeth Dilling, Father Charles Coughlin, Gerald K. Smith and the rest would actually have been better off politically if some Great Crash had occurred after World War Two. It would have enabled them to justify their arguments that Roosevelt had simply been selling the country to the Jews. But instead millions of middle-class conservative Christian families enjoyed decades of capitalist prosperity while campaigning for Barry Goldwater or whoever, and this was only made possible because of the economic order that came out of WWII.

    On the other hand, if the USA had not followed the course it did under Roosevelt and pursued entry into WWII, then the crisis of voerproduction would have caused the downfall of US capitalism decades ago. The USA in the 1920s was already experiencing many of the same pressures which led to the stagflation crisis of the 1970s. With the greatest productive capacity on the face of the earth, the USA was locked out of world markets which small colonial powers in Europe monopolized. That crisis of capitalism was only alleviated by a war against Hitler which transformed the USA into the greatest superpower on earth.

    Now as it happens, Israel was also born out of political machinations which took place in WWII. For better or worse, this does mean that a close ideological tie does exist between USAians and Israelis. That does not mean that Chomsky’s “strategic asset” assertions have any relevance. But it is difficult for a class of WASPs whose salvation from the crisis of capitalism in the 1930s was tied to a war against Hitler to begin a public campaign charging that too much Jewish influence is a problem. This gives rising upcoming Jews a psychological advantage in pushing their own interests which the old-fashioned WASPs can not meet.

  42. PatrickSMcNally said on August 10th, 2010 at 4:33pm #

    > After WWII, Japan was economically prostrate. But somebody decided to invest heavily in the Japanese auto industry.

    That, I believe, is perfectly explicable in terms of the Cold War, the knowledge of revolutionary outbursts which occurred in parts of Europe after World War One (Finland, Hungary, Germany, to name a few), and the wish to avoid what was seen as the “Versailles error.” There actually did exist a Communist Party of Japan in the aftermath of WWII. If Japanese industry had not been deliberately revived then the CPJ would almost certainly have grown in influence. All US decision-makers were very alert after the war to the possibility that some future Hitler might gain influence if the defeated states were economically punished in a prolonged way. Whatever political schemes may have been fashioned at a later date by some Jews, I don’t see any way of getting over this as the main explanation for why Japan was allowed to build an auto-industry.

  43. teafoe2 said on August 10th, 2010 at 4:40pm #

    your final point I find solid.

    this part I find ill-informed. “Historically we know that the more upwardly mobile Jews in Europe tended to be those who put things like the Torah and Talmud away in the closet and more often considered themselves as nonreligious. Only the creation of Israel enabled the formation of a new type of identity whereby Jews were able to very forthrightly define themselves as Jews without simply burying themselves in the ghettoes away from civilization as Torah Jews in eastern Europe had done.”

    At one time I accepted this kind of mythology, but reading what these Jewish scholars say, I’ve come to a different take on it. I’ll find some specific sources for you when I have a chance.

    Right now I’m aware of not responding to DB, so if you’ll excuse me for now I want to reread what he posted…

  44. teafoe2 said on August 10th, 2010 at 5:06pm #

    Deadbeat, Glen Ford labelled the Tea Partyists as white racists, which all evidence I’ve seen indicates is true.

    To me, Raimundo exposes himself when he defends the teabaggers. Libertarianism & “Constitutionalist” Republicans are one thing, the Tea Party phenomenon is another. I mean it might be possible to hold your nose and make a tactical alliance with some of these America Firster Libertarian Republicans — because all these Libertarians are basically Republicans who smoke pot — such a temporary tactical alliance might, just granting it for the purposes of argument, be something worth considering at a particular conjuncture.

    But this Tea Party business is nothing but a RightWing rulingclass project promoted by the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Richard Mellon Scaife. Until one of these “antiwar republitarians” shows up here on DV or Counterpunch or even DN! talking in non-insulting, non-racist terms about wanting to ally with people who are less affluent, I pass.

    If they want to “reach out”, let them endorse the Olympia BDS petition.

    As to your charge that Ford “smeared” pro-Obama Blacks in 2008, I’m sorry but to me it’s total nonsense. Whites who knew what Obama was from the jump couldn’t open their mouths around Black people then. One time I took some McKinney for Pres posters into a Black bookstore: OOPS! excuse me please, wrong pew. I got out of there before somebody started pushing me around physically, not a moment too soon.

    So as far as I’m concerned, the sooner you drop the bit about your “nuanced” take on Obama the more credibility you’ll have on your more important views. IMO you just leave an opening for Max to discredit you. So if I were you I’d cut my losses.

    Sorry to be so frank, but what are friends for?

    All this is with all due respect for your really superb writing on the main issues.

  45. shabnam said on August 10th, 2010 at 6:51pm #

    People who ae interested in capitalism and those who are responsible for the development of campitalism should read a book by Werner Sombart, “The Jews and Modern Capitalism”. It is an interesting book.

    Sombart’s book The Jews and Modern Capitalism was a response to Max Weber, and most of his argument was entirely if imperfectly Weberian. Capitalism is inconceivable without the Protestant ethic; Judaism is much more Protestant (older, tougher, and purer) than Protestantism; Judaism is the progenitor of Capitalism. You can read the book at the following link.

    http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/sombart_werner/Jews_and_modern_capitalism/sombart_jews_capitalism.pdf

  46. PatrickSMcNally said on August 10th, 2010 at 7:24pm #

    > Capitalism is inconceivable without the Protestant ethic; Judaism is much more Protestant (older, tougher, and purer) than Protestantism; Judaism is the progenitor of Capitalism.

    Judaism as we’ve come to understand in the last 2000 years is the byproduct of a time when the formal order imposed by the Catholic Church set demands which could not be actually conformed by real society. Although Christians could be forbidden from lending money at interest, the real world has always taught us that money-lending at interest was an important part of an economy seeking to move beyond agrarian tribalism. So Jews defined a social space in which such practices were permissible as long as it was understood that Jews were to be excluded in ghettoes outside of the Christian community. In that way the Catholic decrees were sustained while the real world economy moved forward.

    Yet any comparison of German Jews to Polish and Russian Jews in the 19th century should convince an honest person that things were much more complex than just that would suggest. One can certainly write many dissertations about the role which ideas traceable to Judaism played in influencing German Jews. To simply point to the large number of German Jews who very fervently claimed to themselves to be German first and foremost of all doesn’t settle all further questions about the Jewish side in their character. But what is not disputable is that a much clearer, tighter adherence to the Torah and Talmud texts can be documented in great detail among the majority of Russian and Polish Jews who remained sitting in ghettoes and never went anywhere.

    This choice of roles as illiterate ghetto-dwellers was actually enforced by religious adherence as these eastern Jews held rigidly that they were to remain apart from the Goyim in their own little ghettoes. Whatever the lessons which German Jews who claimed to have been integrated into German culture may have quietly derived from their Jewish heritage, it was clearly a much more complex process than such can be accounted for by invoking passages from the Torah & Talmud. If it weren’t then Russian and Polish Jews with rigorous training in these texts should have come out ahead faster than the German Jews. But they clearly didn’t.

  47. Deadbeat said on August 10th, 2010 at 8:10pm #

    @ TF2

    You are right. I do admit my word choice was poor but for now I’ll just keep a wait and see attitude.

  48. hayate said on August 10th, 2010 at 10:10pm #

    The fact this zeese article doesn’t mention zionist influence in any meaningful way detracts form it’s usefulness. Half the story means it’s not history, but just a story.

    Noticed some mention of justin raimondo. His commentaries can be fun, but he’s generally a cut-out. He supported the mossad/cia green “color rev” against Iran, still does, in fact. Also, he describes neo-cons as leftists who invaded the conservative ranks. That’s rubbish. The neo-cons are what the last part of their label implies – cons. These were zionists who worked to provide ziofascists with what they wanted. Always. If that was pretending to be leftwing, they did that, if it was pretending to be paleo-cons, they did that. They are prostitutes, first and foremost. Their politics are those of power and greed. Any ole propaganda will do for these critters. I call them the 21st century’s nazis, because like nazis, and fascists in general, they strive for oligarch power. They are throwbacks to the robber barons of the 19th century, intermixed with medieval serf mentality, cultural/religious bigotry and generally all those traits of the worst of society. They’ve been rightwing from the very beginning, israeli, Jewish rightwing. Identical to nazis.

  49. shabnam said on August 11th, 2010 at 12:49am #

    {Yet any comparison of German Jews to Polish and Russian Jews in the 19th century should convince an honest person that things were much more complex than just that would suggest.}

    You are right. However, the statement that you quote is not mine. This statement is attributed to Sombart. But, I think Sombart mainly was talking about the Jews. Of course Judaism was substituted for Protestant.

    Sombart argued that his “Jew” could be substituted for Weber’s “Puritan” with better results in depicting the origins of capitalism.
    Sombart wrote that in the process of systematic economic change, a new spirit arose within an already existing system with whose principles it stood in conflict. If successful, this spirit would give rise to new principles that would become the basis of a new system. The principle of “enterprise” first arose within the preindustrial crafts system as something in conflict with the old system’s principles. As conditions changed, the ability of the new spirit to grow was increased. When he was talking about the Jews as agent of change for the new economic arrangement, he really meant America, therefore, he was not comparing German Jews to Polish and Russian Jews, rather, he obtained most of his data from Jews living in America and colonial settlements through the continent where we should not forget about the role of the Jews in the early stages of the New World slave trade.

    In fact, he considered Berlin as nothing but a suburb of New York. America was portrayed as the land of high capitalism. He presented the Jews as entrepreneur and in responses to Weber’s Protestant Ethic, reminded people that the entrepreneur had the same sense of ‘calling’ that Weber’s Puritan had.
    Sombart argued that the Jews first made their American appearance in the voyages of ‘discovery’, in which, he claimed, they played an important financial and organizational role. They dominated the largest of the early colonies, Brazil; and after their expulsion from there in 1654, the economic center of gravity moved northward. Using largely Jewish sources, Sombart documented the presence of individual Jews throughout the United States and then on the basis of this evidence asserted that there was an “early and universal admixture of Jewish elements among the first settlers” and that this Jewish element largely shaped American culture.

    These Jews were not only from Germany; rather, they were Spanish and Portuguese. These Jews were carrying the knowledge that they obtain from Islamic Spain and the precious metal, Gold, silver, and gem, they have acquired. They knew the language of Arabic, an important language of Islamic empire to transfer the knowledge into the European countries that were behind. The Medical book of Avi Sina was still in use in the medical school of Europe, mainly Italy, by beginning of the 16th century.

  50. Max Shields said on August 11th, 2010 at 9:53am #

    The problem with going after the TeaPartiers (who ever they are) is (like the focus on personalities, such as Chomsky or Mao, or Che, or Ahmadinejad) that any of these are the cause of the problem nor can solutions be found by simply castigating them (or for that matter praising them). All too frequently to do so (in the case of castigation) is to throw the baby out witht he bath water. Rejecting the Tea Party regardless of what may be uttered in their “name” is to create an irrational cycle such as that tirade on the Hammond thread. Nothing solved and simply pushing people of perhaps like-mindedness on crucial matters to defend or blow out of proporation every word uttered as “Chomsky”. You’d be better off blaning the whole Pal/Is on God.

    Much of history’s poorly told story is that most of what happens has nothing to do with Napolean or Ganges Khan, or Stalin (let alone groups like the Tea Party or one professor like Noam Chomsky). It is primarily structural and these happened to be figures along the way. Wars fought are not generally ideological nor are they particularly nonsecular.

    For those absorbed in the arcaneness of who donit or lost in wikipedia historical grab bag, this explanation may not be as much fun…but perhaps it’s more honest than the sophmoric Marxist, et al posting that passes for thoughtful analyses.

  51. teafoe2 said on August 11th, 2010 at 11:08am #

    Nice try Maxie ol boy, but no cigar. This pile of your warm soft “product” won’t sell any better than previous steaming fragrant piles.

    Exhibit A” “the Teapartiers, whoever they are”: Who the Teaparty leaders, initiators and spokespeople are is on record. It is not a secret, it’s all over google, and linked to on antiwar.com.

    The rest of your sentence ends up as an incoherent non-sequitur because of your inability to grasp the basics of English grammar and syntax. Your next sentence recycling a tired proverb winds up meaningless also, because the context is left unclear. I defy the reader to explain what you mean by “baby” and what by “water”.

    “Rejecting the Tea Party regardless of what may be uttered in its name”: but Max, it isn’t “regardless” but precisely BECAUSE of what is uttered, not only “in its name” but by precisely those persons who identify themselves and are recognized by followers and sympathizers as the leading spokespeople for the Tea Party movement/trend and ideology, that anything or anybody who supports any of this TP garbage must not only be rejected but denounced. Does this apply to you yourself, Max? Let the foo shit:)

    Is it a coincidence that we see one of the most stalwart defenders of Chomsky now offering a defense of the Tea Party? Certainly gives one something to think about, no?

    Your next sentence is again incoherent. Maybe a teacher of Literature with experience deconstructing symbolist poetry could divine what you intend to convey, but I’m reluctant to put words in your mouth lest I be accused (by Hammond maybe?:) of creating a strawman.

    I think I can find something advising us to keep hoping some of the TPers may “perhaps” be likeminded on crucial matters, but you offer nothing as evidence that such a farfetched possibility may actually be the case. Since there is a lot of published evidence that such is NOT the case, and since I’m not as adept at ESP as you seem to be, I’ll wait until you come up with some evidence indicating some of the TPers actually hold less than repugnant positions on crucial matters.

    Next, you assert that History’s story is poorly told. Permit me to offer the possibility that your negative impression of the field may be largely due to the fact that you’ve been reading the wrong historians.

    You follow this by trying to argue out of both sides of your keyboard at once: First you poohpooh the importance of leading figures in determining how history unfolds, claiming that “its all structural”. Later you poohpooh Marxist analysis, which as far as I know is the basis for all later attempts to analyze society by examining structural relationships. So I’m moved to ask what method of structural analysis forms the basis for your views?

    “Wars fought are not generally ideological”: great example of a sweeping generality. Please provide some examples of totally non-ideological wars? (muttermutter whatnonsense…)
    And you conclude by badmouthing anybody who decides to dig a little deeper into any of this. You suggest that your trip may “perhaps” be more honest, but there ain’t no perhaps about it: you’re kidding yourself.

    Jeremy H and pals may buy some of your ignorance-worshipping silliness but few others will.

  52. hayate said on August 11th, 2010 at 12:46pm #

    teafoe2

    “Is it a coincidence that we see one of the most stalwart defenders of Chomsky now offering a defense of the Tea Party? Certainly gives one something to think about, no?”

    That is something I’ve definitely noticed in the last few years which I mentioned on the piece that deconstructed hammond’s chomsky propaganda piece. Chomsky seems to have all kinds of ziofascist and fascist supporters defending him now. Very odd to see the corporate right coming to the defense of the “foremost left analyst” and defending him from criticism from the left. But that’s how zionists operate. War is peace, slavery is freedom, etc.

  53. teafoe2 said on August 11th, 2010 at 1:37pm #

    Thanks Hayate:)

    Max interrupting made me forget what I wanted to mention to Patrick, re “This choice of roles as illiterate ghetto-dwellers was actually enforced by religious adherence as these eastern Jews held rigidly that they were to remain apart from the Goyim in their own little ghettoes.”

    Of course I have no firsthand knowledge since I’ve never been east of Bayreut, but everything I’ve read indicates that few shtetl dwellers were “illiterate”. A cogent argument is made that because of the emphasis on literacy in Hebrew needed in order to read Torah, Talmud, rabbinical commentaries etc, Jews were enabled to apply the linguistical skills acquired to becoming fluent and literate in other languages too, very useful after arriving at Ellis Island.

  54. teafoe2 said on August 11th, 2010 at 1:40pm #

    http://www.rense.com/general60/stun.htm

    Stunning Jewish Success
    Dominates American Media
    Compiled by Jeffrey Blankfort
    12-6-4

  55. Max Shields said on August 11th, 2010 at 1:44pm #

    Teafoe2 you are proof of the positive of the problem. Entranced with your recently read Monarch notes…did you just graduate or are in still matriculating? Or have you just not gotten over those night-time gab sessions with the dorm mates?

    You know little about life…and a whole lot about nothing that will change the world one iota.

  56. Max Shields said on August 11th, 2010 at 1:48pm #

    [Repeat with correction] Teafoe2 you are proof positive of the problem. Entranced with your recently read Monarch notes…did you just graduate or are in still matriculating? Or have you just not gotten over those night-time gab sessions with the dorm mates?

    What’s amazing Teafoe2 is that I posted above without ever mentioning you and yet your emotional angst seems to have taken it to heart…the shoe fits!

    You know little about life…and a whole lot about nothing that will change the world one iota.

  57. Max Shields said on August 11th, 2010 at 1:59pm #

    “I defy the reader to explain what you mean by “baby” and what by “water”.”

    This is an American colloquialism. With all that Wikipedia reading you’ve lost touch with the mother tongue… Although this is not unique to US English.

    http://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-throwing-the-baby-out-with-the-bath-water-mean.htm

    Basically you haven’t laid a glove on what I said so much as show your own ignorance.

  58. teafoe2 said on August 11th, 2010 at 2:07pm #

    How old are you, Max? Your posts are getting more and more childish.

    Do you expect any regular DV reader to believe, when you start defending the TP crowd, that you’d completely forgot about posts higher on the thread signed by “Tea Foe”?

    What is “still matriculating”? Something to do with moonshine operations?

    At least I can write a coherent English sentence.

    If you’re so smart, why don’t you either rebut one of the points I made, or say something about public affairs? All you’re able to come up with are silly insults.

    Let me pull your coat: your insinuations about “monarch notes” and “dorm mates” are so far off the mark it’s hilarious. All they do is reveal what a preppie world you live in:)

  59. Max Shields said on August 11th, 2010 at 2:08pm #

    DV will soon lose whatever it had of intelligence with the like of the bloggers cascading here as counter-zionists. A sense of neocons emerging from Trotsky version is on display. A bastardization of Marx and little to no demonstration of humanity. It’s all personalities and Wikipedia pawned as thinking.

    hayate you are a child and beyond over your head.

  60. teafoe2 said on August 11th, 2010 at 2:11pm #

    Are you really that dense, Max? Or are you just pretending not to understand that I was asking which entity you mentioned in your little rap you meant us to understand to be the baby, and which was the water?

  61. teafoe2 said on August 11th, 2010 at 2:15pm #

    who is turning this into a game of “personalities”? calling another poster a child. how childish.

  62. teafoe2 said on August 11th, 2010 at 2:20pm #

    Here’s a link to a piece I found informative, on an impeccably pro-israel site: http://www.brandeis.edu/cmjs/pdfs/Direct%20Engagement.Sasson.pdf

  63. shabnam said on August 11th, 2010 at 2:23pm #

    People must wake up and do something to stop the tribe of organized Zionist Jews, their extension Rockefeller, and other war criminals before they force their Iron Cage on population of earth. These criminals are organizing the world through mass murder using WMD for the past few centuries ACCORDING TO PROTOCAL, meaning ‘WROLD GOVERNEMNT’ supported by NOAM CHOMSKY.

    They are organized and have control over the banking system and the economy, resources, WMD, mass Media to control majority of the population who are kept ignorant by the Zionist propaganda who are mainly the resident of the Western countries especially the United States, under zionist stooges black and white.
    Read Werner Sombart to know how the world has come to this disaster, Iron Cage. Organize fast and destroy the enemy who are responsible for this Iron Cage, ‘world Government’ according to Protocol before is too late.
    Nathan Rothschild said (1777-1836): “I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the Empire. The man who controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire and I control the British money supply.”

    Rockefeller is reported to have said: “Competition is a sin”. “Own nothing. Control everything”. Because he wants to centralize control of everything and enslave us all, i.e. the modern Nimrod or Pharaoh.

    The Rothschild were behind the colonization and occupations of India and the Rothschild owned British Petroleum was granted unlimited rights to all offshore Indian oil, which is still valid till this day.

    http://www.rense.com/general79/tril.htm

  64. teafoe2 said on August 11th, 2010 at 2:54pm #

    Patrick McN, I can’t find the thread on which you posted about the causes of Stagflation. But I wanted to mention that I find Overproduction accounts well for the stagnation, but not so well for the inflation.

    I’m sure you have a good explanation for that too, so if you have time?

  65. Max Shields said on August 11th, 2010 at 3:41pm #

    When someone acts like a child I call them out. So, when this Hayate character makes a childish remark that conflates Chomsky with the Tea Party movement, it’s only natural to wonder “how old are you?” It is the logic of a less than fully formed adult.

    And you, teafoe2, thanked him for his remarks. You can answer by just throwing this back at me or questioning common English as a means to demonstrate to one and all your significant limitations.

    Just waiting for you to expire.

  66. teafoe2 said on August 11th, 2010 at 4:04pm #

    don’t hold your breath, sucker:)

    Okay, so you’re too lazy to cut & paste the remark you call “childish”. Let me see if I can find it…

  67. PatrickSMcNally said on August 14th, 2010 at 8:11am #

    > I can’t find the thread on which you posted about the causes of Stagflation. But I wanted to mention that I find Overproduction accounts well for the stagnation, but not so well for the inflation.

    The “inflation” part of “stagflation” is accounted for the role of Keynesianism. Keynessianism postulates that capitalism is like a permanent middle-ager who has lived past 30 but never has to fear going past 65. Keynesianism assumes that unlimited opportunities for capital growth exist, but that capitalism in its middle-aged lifestyle requires monetary policies which seek to stimulate it sort of that like that 50-something who needs to take his pills regularly but then can go running around the park. The prime tool which Keynesianism puts forth is the regulation of the money supply which allows government authorities to raise the amount in circulation.

    Keynesianism had always allowed that some degree of inflation could be expected as a consequence of pumping money into an economy. If the money supply grows then sellers may anticipate being able to charge more and hence raise their prices. Not only that, but if people hear that the money supply is going to expand they may start to fear that others will raise prices first. That fear can drive people on to raising their own prices before the next person does. The only thing which can compensate for this is a rise in productivity. If people know that the volume of production is increasing at the same time that the money grows, they may reason that the extra money in circulation will be diverted off to other goods and hence there will be no gain for them to raise their own prices.

    For 25 years after World War II this became a steady pattern in the US economy whereby the money supply was steadily being expanded and the volume of goods and services was steadily growing and common economic wisdom maintained that this growth could be sustained forever through Keynesian stimulus which entailed a steady growth in the money supply. Then the downturn hit in the early 1970s. Profit had declined, overproduction had been reached, businesses began cutting back. But it was now received wisdom in the economy that every economic crisis would be treated by government through a rise in the money supply. With production being reduced this meant that businesses now anticipated inflation, and so began raising their own prices in advance. that then became a cycle.

    The only way that a bourgeois capitalist government was able to deal with this was by making repeated assurances to business that their would be no attempt to spend more money into the economy through “unproductive” actvities such as school lunches or whatever. Business demanded prolonged reassurance that the government wasn’t going to pump more dollars into the economy without giving business a fat contract. That reassurance was a way of compensating for 25 years of Keynesianism in which government economists had taught that pumping more money into the economy was the way to go.