The fake left at the Left Forum should be distinguished from the fake
left of the non-profit industrial complex. The non-profit industrial
complex indeed hires fake activistsbeholden
to government and corporate funders responsible for the very problems
that non-profit activists oppose in the first place. Fake left activists
reside in non-profit organizations such as MoveOn.org and Indivisible.
The fake left I refer to in this piece are perhaps even more insidious
than those paid by foundations and non-profits. This band of
leftists verbally states opposition to imperialism and an embrace of
socialism in theory yet behaves more like amateur soft agents of the US
intelligence services in practice.
These fake leftists reside in an alphabet soup of so-called
Trotskyist organizations like the International Socialist Organization
(ISO). So-called “Trotskyist” organizations have a long history of
supporting US imperialism. I don’t pretend to know which organization
the fake leftists who protested Baraka belonged to. An attendee told me
that the organizers of the protest of Baraka stemmed from the League for
the Revolutionary Party. Thetrend is more important than the
organization. Just days prior to the Left Forum, activists in the
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) wrote an opinion piece claiming
that “The 2,000 US troops in Syria are not there to conduct ‘regime
change.’ They are there to defend the Kurdish Democratic Union Party
(PYD) in North East Syria and to oppose ISIS. Trump has made that
clear.” One of the authors of the piece has been active on social media
denouncing Baraka and the Black Alliance for Peace for being so-called
apologists for Assad. This falls in line with the ISO, which has long
been known to support US-led operations in Libya and Syria in the name of “revolution.”
While claiming to want revolution, there are many activists in these
organizations that choose to insult and defame every revolution that has
ever occurred in history, even the Russian Revolution of 1917.
According to their pro-war ideology, every socialist revolution in
history has been led by despotic, self-interested authoritarians who
wielded “state capitalist” formations to repress and impoverish the
working class. This includes the Chinese and Cuban revolutions in
addition to the Russian. And it ultimately includes any government that
the US doesn’t like and wants to overthrow. As Diana Johnstone put it
simply, “The trouble with these Trotskyists is that they are always
“supporting” other people’s more or less imaginary revolutions. They are
always telling others what to do. They know it all. The practical
result from this verbal agitation is simply to align this brand of
Trotskyism with U.S imperialism.”
-- Danny Haiphong, "The Fake Left at the Left Forum" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
Truest statement of the week II
Robert DeNiro just fired off an f-bomb at Donald Trump, but where were
he and his grandstanding, liberal friends when Obama was dropping more
drone bombs and “removing” more immigrants than any president preceding
him? Where were they when the Clintons were pimping poverty and peddling
influence through the State Department and the Clinton Foundation?
DeNiro was stumping for Hillary Clinton to “prevent Tuesday [election day 2016] from turning into a tragedy .” Reading Follow the Money, Radio Voices for Peace and Justice, an
anthology of 2009-2016 KPFA Flashpoints interviews, would probably
discomfit him because it’s full of tragedy: oil wars, drone bombing,
torture, mass incarceration, mass surveillance, police militarization,
neoliberal trade agreements, poisoned water, botched executions,
ecocide, and the “too-big-to-fail” bank heist that kicked off the Obama
years.
-- Anne Garrison, "Follow The Money, from Obama to Trump" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).
-- Anne Garrison, "Follow The Money, from Obama to Trump" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).
A note to our readers
Hey --
Tuesday night. And we're done.
Let's thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:
The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen, Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen, Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.
And what did we come up with?
Danny gets another truest.
And Ann gets another truest.
Iraqi lives never seem to matter in the US. Which makes you wonder why the US government keeps insisting US troops have to stay in Iraq to 'protect' the Iraqi people.
Ava and C.I. turn in another hard hitting piece.
He is disgusting.
Stan's up to bat. (And thank you to reader Jamie who e-mailed to remind us it's been awhile since we did this feature.)
A look at book coverage in the community.
She has no logic.
What we listened to while writing.
Press release from Senator Patty Murray's office.
Press release from Paralyzed Veterans of America.
A look at the week's best.See you next week.
Peace,
-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.
Editorial: Only SomeLivesMatter apparently
Our 2003 invasion of Iraq led to the deaths of at least tens of thousands of Iraqi children and making refugees of hundreds of thousands more. Count was lost years ago, there have been so many.
Not that anybody cares -- or really ever did.
cc @laurawbush
If you missed it, former First Lady Laura Bush put down her cigarette and drink long enough to write a column. She's outraged, you understand, because Donald Trump is continuing Barack Obama's disgusting policy of separating undocumented immigrants -- children here, parents there.
Now Laura never protested under Barack but we'll let that pass because she was probably hung over a lot and, if we were married to Bully Boy Bush, we'd tumble into bed each night stinking drunk as well.
But it's "cruel," Laura insisted to separate children and parents.
We agree she knows about cruel, she was drunk and killed that teenager. His parents lost their child, that was cruel. She knows cruel.
But she doesn't seem to grasp that when you kill adults -- including civilians -- in Iraq, you take them away from their children and, yes, that's cruel. Also yes, that's what her husband did. But she never felt the need to call that out, did she?
But killing hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq and Afghanistan was just fine.
Trump is a horror show. But we can't let that redeem the Bush clan. No. No thanks. War criminals are criminals too.
- Nahhhh. Laura Bush collaborated when her hubby waged an illegal war in Iraq. Her voice isn't needed. Stop the W Bush rehab tour.
- Funny thing, Laura Bush didn't say it's immoral when 100,000 children died in Iraq War.
Laura Bush husband got us into a war in Iraq that killed thousands because of a lie. So please excuse me if I don’t care what she thinks
- @laurawbush Maybe George can go visit Iraq and walk freely with the Iraqi people and see how they feel about the war he brought to their country ... how many Dead Iraqi’s Mrs. Bush due to your husband’s war?
