194
Lockheed Martin just announced $1,000,000,000 in sales of Patriot missiles today to Saudi, Qatar and Occupied Korea.
With a $B.
And you can see a $B everyday go down at Defense.gov/ News/Contracts.

Posted by: Chipnik | Dec 15 2015 10:55 utc | 203

@173 – “a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism”
Undemocratic Saudi head/hand chopping thug regime (hey, they let a handful of females be elected into a local gov council recently for PR purposes — probably will only be allowed to speak with their mouths full of stones and still can’t drive to work!) is simply setting up a public framework for a mercenary army pool for the obvious reasons.
The history of this wacko Wahhabi cult is steeped in same brutish terrorism across the region in the 1800’s. Little has changed in this 21C ME ‘cash for terror’ syndicate except the owners were then British and now are now North American (or Israeli Zionists if you follow the ‘Jewel Wasp theory’).
And they are running the UN Human Rights Watch — unbelievable, even Hollywood couldn’t make this stuff up!

Posted by: doveman | Dec 15 2015 11:08 utc | 205

174
You guys are like Heckel and Jeckel sitting on the telephone lines and jerbeling as the USEU is hobbled then gutted on the back road out of town. It’s like listening to Walter Cronkite play-by-play live from the deck of the Titanic. Are US and EU citizens that emasculated now, a whole civilization neutered? All you read anymore anywhere is war pron or politics pron or finance pron, or how long lines are for Star Pron tickets.
To paraphrase ‘Kill Bill’, for this meh, we deserve to die, but suppose it’s inevitable, since Mil.Gov achieved critical mass under the Bush and Cheney Hanging Chad Coup of 2000 with their creation of DHS, with now ~51.7% of Americans either employed by or on contract to, either receiving welfare at or a pension from, Mil.Gov, and with more generals than fighting platoons, and more admirals than fighting ships, just imagine a general at the head of every platoon, and every ship down to an LST captained by an admiral, yet STILL more generals and admirals in reserve. We make the Politburo look good.

Posted by: Chipnik | Dec 15 2015 11:40 utc | 207

New you can use from Banderastan.
Fight night in Ukrainian Rada as followers of President Poroshenko demand resignation of PM Yatsenyuk. The tension between PM and Pres. is interesting, and the Rada of Solons on the Dnepr is always good for some yuks. Biden is said to have told them to get with the program on Minsk-2, but we’ll see.
Over at Fort Russ you will see a number of items about ongoing Kiev deployments and shelling along the line of contact. No war at this time, but never far in the background.

Posted by: rufus magister | Dec 15 2015 13:12 utc | 209

WHITE ROSE
The fourth leaflet of the German anti-Nazi group the White Rose, produced between 1942 and early 1943.

Every word that comes from Hitler’s mouth is a lie. When he says peace, he means war, and when he blasphemously uses the name of the Almighty, he means the power of evil, the fallen angel, Satan. His mouth is the foul-smelling maw of Hell, and his might is at bottom accursed. True, we must conduct a struggle against the National Socialist terrorist state with rational means; but whoever today still doubts the reality, the existence of demonic powers, has failed by a wide margin to understand the metaphysical background of this war. Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element: The struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist. Everywhere and at all times demons have been lurking in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in the order of Creation as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate. Everywhere and at all times of greatest trial men have appeared, prophets and saints who cherished their freedom, who preached the One God and who His help brought the people to a reversal of their downward course. Man is free, to be sure, but without the true God he is defenceless against the principle of evil. He is a like rudderless ship, at the mercy of the storm, an infant without his mother, a cloud dissolving into thin air.

Quiz:
If we substitute a words Hitler, National-Socialism from above passage with any US president and National-Socialism with Republican/Democrat party what we get?

Posted by: Neretva’43 | Dec 15 2015 13:49 utc | 211

Can someone clarify this for me – if Blackwater / Academi / Xe whatever they are now are an admitted party to the Yemeni conflict does that then make any Blackwater / Academi / Xe employee a legitimate target worldwide for anyone fighting on the side of the Yemenis anywhere in the world?
Surely it does right?
As a party to a conflict you invite conflict back to wherever it is you happen to be.
Can anyone confirm to me that is how it works in war? Afterall – all’s fair in love and war I believe.

Posted by: Julian | Dec 15 2015 14:13 utc | 213

@193, You’re full of shit: “Bolshevik” means majority in Russian.

Posted by: ruralito | Dec 15 2015 14:38 utc | 215

Posted by: somebody | Dec 15, 2015 9:31:42 AM | 209
Interesting, so does that mean techies operating drones out of the conflict zone are non-combatants?
Are military leaders at MI6 or the Pentagon non-combatants?
If a country is involved in a war with the United States, say Iraq perhaps, does that mean targeting of the Pentagon and military employees therein is an illegal action via the Geneva Convention?
Where is the line drawn?
So someone in McLean, Virginia directing Blackwater operatives on the ground in Yemen about targets to strike and neutralise is a non-combatant?
Can you delineate that line succinctly for us thanks.

Posted by: Julian | Dec 15 2015 14:59 utc | 217

@193, You’re full of shit: “Bolshevik” means majority in Russian.
Posted by: ruralito | Dec 15, 2015 9:38:55 AM | 210
Bolsheviks were a “majority” of Social Democrats who split into to factions, “miensheviks” and “bolshevik”, named after their shares of delegates in the respective party congress. After revolution of February 1917, Bolsheviks did not have a majority, and for that reason they made subsequent October Revolution.
In the landscape of many competing revolutionary and less-than-revolutionary movements, they were best organized and most ruthless, which gives a certain comparison to the opposition factions in Syria.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Dec 15 2015 15:12 utc | 219

Noirette | Dec 14, 2015 12:19:06 PM | 124 –

The US for ex. is a highly re-distributive society, arguably it maintains 50 million alive thru taxation, and has the highest business tax in the world (with Japan), 35%

Are you seriously trying to push the notion that the US Government redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor — or am I reading your cryptic style wrong?
The US maintains a vast army of structurally unemployed to push down wages and make the conditions of work precarious for those who do work — what Wall Street gushingly calls “labor flexibility.” If they happen to dole a pitance to the marginalized to prevent revolt — a pitance which is always being cut back, pared down (Food pantries under threat of closure in my city, New Bedford, now) — can you really with a straight face on this blog call that “redistribution through taxation? ” Is Social Security, which comes out of the pockets of the working poor, but is capped for the rich, so that a poor person pays 1000 times the rate of a Trump or a Gates, “re-distribution?”
Of course this pitance pales before the “wealthfare” programs for the rich: Many corporations pay no taxes at all, others get “refunds” for their lack of taxes, capital gains and death taxes are pitifully low, banksters are bailed out to the tune of trillions, etc., etc.
You ought to educate yourself before you foist off snobbish opinions on us. I suggest Mark Zepezauer, Take the Rich Off Welfare.

The heart of this book, which was originally published in 1996, is in its opening pages, where Zepezauer presents the formulas upon which his rich analysis devolves. He exposes a leviathan of graft and corruption, and makes plain its meaning: the rich clobbering anyone who’s not. He documents growing economic disparities that haven’t been as severe since 1929, and puts the lie to viewing people on welfare—as opposed to those on “wealthfare”—as social parasites.
A critical ingredient in Zepezauer’s method is comparing income and Social Security (“payroll”) taxes for rich and poor, and the concomitant government services they enjoy. The rich pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than do the poor. Capital gains taxes have shrunk drastically in the last half-century. Dividend and investment income is not taxed, and many very wealthy corporations pay no taxes, at all. Adding one injury to another, corporations benefit disproportionately from what Zepezauer calls the five basic types of wealthfare: tax breaks, subsidies, firesales, cost overruns, and lax enforcement against white-collar crime.
Regressive taxes, those that disproprtionately hit the poorest, have seen the sharpest increases over the last quarter-century. The wealthy, who have seen sharp increases in income in that time, pay a vastly smaller percentage of their income in taxes than do people of lesser means. In the 1950s corporations paid half of federal revenues. Today they pay just 7.4%. The lost revenue has to be made up by higher taxes for the poor and middle class, or by cuts in services.
Social Security is supposedly in crisis, even though it has perennially run a large surplus. That surplus is supposed to be kept in trust to pay future beneficiaries. Social Security was originally a set-aside program, but was incorporated into the “unified budget” under Lyndon Johnson. It has thus become just another income tax to be sucked up in wasteful military spending or corporate welfare and fraud, says Zepezauer. The Social Security Trust Fund is owed $1 trillion and interest. The payroll tax has seen sharp increases especially beginning with Reagan. At the same time it is capped on incomes over $87,000. Thus Bill Gates, who has as much money as the 100 million poorest Americans, pays the same Social Security tax as as a bus driver making $87,000. If this cap alone were removed, Social Security revenues would increase by about $80 billion annually.
According to Zepezauer’s extensive documentation, wealthfare rose from $448 billion a year in 1996 to $815 billion in 2003, an 82% increase. In the same period welfare rose from $130 billion to $193 billion, a 41% increase. Almost the entire increase was due to vastly higher Medicaid costs.
Wealthfare enjoyed by big business includes tax avoidance by transnationals, lower taxes on capital gains, accelerated depreciation, insurance loopholes, business meals and entertainment, tax free municipal bonds, and export subsidies. Other corporate goodies include the savings and loan bailout, agribusiness subsidies, media handouts, nuclear subsidies, aviation subsidies, mining subsidies, oil and gas tax breaks, timber subsidies, and others. Among other particularly egregious developments is a $100,000 “accelerated depreciation” for the largest of the gas-guzzling SUVs.
Military waste and fraud is in its own category, and accounts for about a quarter of the wealthfare. The Pentagon budget increased by $70 billion annually from 2001 to 2003, to $393 billion. Supplemental spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan added costs of several hundred billions more. The Pentagon loses outright billions of dollars that it often rectifies by simply making accounting write-offs. Overpaying military contractors through cost overruns and ridiculous prices—a $2,043 nut and a $2,548 pair of duckbill pliers to name a tiny fraction of all the outrageous examples—costs scores of billions a year. Weapons contractors are regularly convicted of felonies. Although they often accrue fines of tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, these are relatively light, and then it’s back to business as usual.
B-2 bombers, originally estimated to cost $550 million each ended up costing $2.2 billion, literally more than their weight in gold. Three unnecessary Seawolf subs were built at $2.4 billion apiece. That project was eventually abandoned to build 30 of the equally redundant Virginia class of submarines, at a cost of $73 billion. Dick Cheney, Caspar Weinberger, George Schultz, William Perry, James Baker, and Frank Carlucci are just a smattering of officials who have swung through the revolving door between high government positions and the military contractors with whom they do business.
“In 1994,” writes Zepezauer, “the murderous government of Indonesia got over $125 million in Export-Import loans to buy equipment from Hughes Aircraft. Ex-Im [also] insured a $3 million loan to General Electric to build a factory in Mexico that cost 1,500 jobs in Indiana. The Chinese government used an $18 million loan to modernize a steel plant—even though that company was accused of illegally dumping steel onto US markets below cost.” The US government grants foreign governments $7 billion a year, much of which is used to pay US arms manufacturers.
Middle to lower-middle incomes—the vast majority—bear the brunt of this unfair system because they are neither qualified for the benefits of the poorest such as Medicaid and food stamps, nor are their incomes large enough to take advantage of the corporate welfare of the rich. The already rich elite on the other hand reap criminal¾in some cases, literally windfalls. Other tactics are technically legal such as what Zepezauer refers to as “the Bermuda Shuffle” in which corporations incorporate by opening a mail drop in, say, the Cayman Islands or Bermuda, while still enjoying the superior infrastructure of the United States where they do the bulk of their business.

This, of course, doesn’t even attempt to examine the original problem of “distribution” before your alleged Santa Claus “re-distribution” to the poor.
P.S. Several threads ago when b and everyone else was rightly convinced that the downing of a Russian jet by the Turks was a pre-meditated ambush you dropped a link from the fabulating VICE website, no less, using their own stripped down version of “science” which avoids examining all of the evidence in favor of misinterpreting two maps in an attempt to obfuscate the truth leading to a “He said, she said,” they are both to blame conclusion.
Nobody commented on that link either, but I will be reading you much more carefully from now on.

Posted by: Reading Noirette More Carefully Now | Dec 15 2015 15:22 utc | 221

H@170
You’re blowing smoke, Hoarse and trying to shame me into joining you and the other hysterical Pod People.
Russia and the international teams that removed Assad’s sarin, other gas weapons and destroyed the production facilities proved my stated facts. You claims are based on smoke or special beliefs others must submit to which is BS.
If you or anyone else can produce real verifiable evidence that someone other than Assad produced Sarin and used it in Syria I will admit my ignorance, I doubt you will make a similar promise about your position.

Posted by: Wayoutwest | Dec 15 2015 15:27 utc | 223

Last night, I posted an RT News link about the new Saudi “coalition” (Lone Wolf@173) which I aptly named “Coalition of the Beggars.” It turned out the name was fitting, as confirmed by Alexander Perendzhiev, Russian military analyst, who,

[…] said that the Saudis were creating a structure where they would be the main coordinator “not of the fight against terrorism but of the financial flows and economic project to strengthen their own clout […]”

What is the Aim of Saudi-Led Islamic Coalition Against Terrorism?

Posted by: Lone Wolf | Dec 15 2015 16:03 utc | 225

Theyve shut down every school in LA because of ‘a threat’.
That is all they need to say now and people bend over. Dear me.

Posted by: Bill | Dec 15 2015 17:02 utc | 227

Posted by: Wayoutwest | Dec 15, 2015 10:27:54 AM | 218
You aren’t listening and/or are being evasive.
So, now you ask a two part question. Well, the first part is easy: plenty of countries make Sarin. The second is almost as easy: you can’t prove that the Assad government used Sarin. Nor can the anti-Assad Coalition – a group of governments with HUGE resources and a keen desire to see this crime pinned on Assad. If they had solid evidence they would’ve made it public.
What we do know, however, is that a huge smuggling operation has been operating for years that supplies weapons to Syrian rebels. That operation could have easily allowed for smuggling Sarin or Sarin components into Syria.
We also know other relevant facts such as that Western governments mislead their people (prime example MH-17) and have engaged in regime change many times, and the ballistics research that you chose to ignore.

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Dec 15 2015 17:13 utc | 229

Posted by: jfl | Dec 15, 2015 4:39:58 AM | 191
Not just Bogie Ya’alon’s speech was interesting, plus the setting of the Saban Center, other speakers were John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, US Democrats’ Two Faces at the Saban Forum read on …
○ Israel’s Ya’alon advocates use of Sunni proxies to fight ISIS and Iran
Earlier confrontation …
○ Israel’s Ya’alon Tongue Lashing at Kerry Nothing New
Ya’alon represents the hardliners which includes Lieberman, Bennett and Netanyahu himself and a majority of Israelis!
In addition, billionair backer of Netanyahu is Sheldon Adelson who had bought Israel’s newspaper Hayom to further the cause of settler extremists. Quite stunning would be if it’s Adelson who just bought the Las Vegas Review-Journal to protect his gambling assets in Las Vegas. It’s Nevada’s largest newspaper.

Posted by: Oui | Dec 15 2015 18:07 utc | 231

@Lone Wolf
I saw your mention of my Rick and Morty suggestion over the weekend, but I typically comment under the generous protection (pipe dreams, probably) of my corporate VPN network so I abstained replying until now. I’m glad you enjoyed the episode and I thank you for your myriad contributions to the dialogue on this site. As much as I learn from the initial posts themselves, the value of the debate within the comment threads cannot be overstated.

Posted by: Bruno Marz | Dec 15 2015 18:21 utc | 233

J@230
It may seem illogical to us but we don’t know what logic Assad, a hereditary autocrat might use when faced with defeat and beheading. We do know that when his use of barrel bombs was exposed, another illegal weapon, the Western response was limited to strong words so he increased their use because they are effective. he may have used that example to push the envelope and see how far he could go before a real military response was threatened.
All of the facts you mention about smuggling and Western lies may be true but it is faulty logic to project that, without proof, onto these incidents.

Posted by: Wayoutwest | Dec 15 2015 18:40 utc | 235

at 221, I am flattered you want to watch me closely. I never expected anything like that on MoA, ha ha ha. 🙂
You might learn something. Please ask about any details, I can amplify. I can give an e-mail, we can fight it out in private. Serious!
I am under the impression that surveillance and scores on political correctness was OUT and upholding free speech and all that jazz was IN. That presumably includes linking to anything at all in function of whatever discourse, issue. The Stasi is out of fashion, as is vetting pol. correcteness for the Politburo. If frightened socio-democrats want to rank ppl, and practise exclusion, go ahead (There is money in it btw but not much..and probably not to you..)
Oh my God my son has gone to a djihadist site we have a key-logger on him ….
I once linked to Balkanist Magazine and got dumped on big time and once I linked to Dabiq (IS magazine, one should really look at it.. hard to believe ppl talk about IS propaganda and don’t read Dabiq), that was ignored.

Posted by: Noirette | Dec 15 2015 19:17 utc | 237

149
There is a structural fallacy in your argument concern. The Goldbuggeres paint the $465T in hedged derivatives as a Sword of Damoclese hanging over the neck of civilization, if the bubble pops. It’s not. Those short positions are time based and margined in the $Ts every day. Every day the margin calls go out and individuals or funds go broke. It is ONLY if They panic the market and stampede investors that margin calls can bankrupt the system, as I pointed out. If the markets go flat line, if trade goes flat line, if energy goes flatline, as is happening, longs don’t get called, the shorts do, but there are fewer and fewer. The system remains stable, as I said.
Then con artists like Bezos and Zuckerberg go broke, not us.
The only way to win, is not to play.

Posted by: Chipnik | Dec 15 2015 19:57 utc | 239

Posted by: Wayoutwest | Dec 15, 2015 1:40:07 PM | 234
I was not trying to blame the anti-Assad Coalition as much as point out YOUR ‘faulty logic’ (many would call it something else). But you compounded your mistake with arrogant demands and now respond with the ‘crazy dictator’ straw-man that we have seen used time and time again.
The Dictators are looking pretty good compared to the death and destruction that the West and Gulf Monarchies caused in removing them and the chaos that came after ‘liberation’.
And we should not forget that those ‘removals’ were ILLEGAL: the war against Iraq was based on trumped up intel and the USA turned a UN no-fly zone into a bombing campaign. Now, in Syria, so-called ‘moderate rebels’ are mostly extremists supported/tolerated by a group of nations that have conspired to remove Assad.

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Dec 15 2015 20:18 utc | 241

@Noirette@236
[…] once I linked to Dabiq (IS magazine, one should really look at it.. hard to believe ppl talk about IS propaganda and don’t read Dabiq), that was ignored.
You have to read Wayoutwaste twice, the head-chopping, entrails-eating version, pictures and all at Dabiq, and then the rehashed version at MoA? Now, that requires a stomach, just the stench of his posts is enough to keep me away from Dabiq!

Posted by: Lone Wolf | Dec 15 2015 20:46 utc | 243

DH@243
The FSA is an umbrella organization composed of many individual groups that do exist. So far all the groups that have responded to Putin’s whacky claims have stated their relationship with Russia is to get bombed by them.
Putin’s strange claims seem to be directed at promoting the fantasy that their vicious actions in Syria will somehow convert the nationalist rebels into allies against the Islamic State and stop them from fighting the Axis forces. It is probably aimed at the local Russian audience who have been waiting for the elusive ‘progress’ in the Syria Crusade.

Posted by: Wayoutwest | Dec 15 2015 21:24 utc | 245

@ruralito, 147:
Excellent reply! Plus, as Lenin put it, “When we hang the capitalist they will sell us the rope we use.” This is why the capitalist state imposes sanctions on technology transfer to socialist and other targeted societies—individual capitalists will make a quick buck even trading with their class enemy; it’s part of their state’s job to impose discipline on *them* to prevent this, in their own interest as a class.
China is now the socialist giant that US capitalism is having nightmares over, even as it can’t help itself continuing to try to redbait Russia as though it were still the USSR… As we now say here in the Black Lives Matter movement, “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we are seeds.”

Posted by: Vintage Red | Dec 15 2015 22:21 utc | 247

@dh@247
@244. That Putin is one wacky dude for sure. Be sure to let us know if you come up with something more substantial.
You’ll be waiting until hell freezes over. You’re dealing with a terminal case of acute mental paralysis.

Posted by: Lone Wolf | Dec 16 2015 0:42 utc | 249

@Noirette, 124:
My first degree was in economics, and for the most part I concur with your judgment—certainly with capitalist economics. I myself wouldn’t equate welfare-type “redistributive” policies with socialism—the PTB here want us to think the two are one and the same because they want people to think socialism is only about “the dole” rather than social ownership of the means of production. I would agree that the US appears more “welfare-ist” than France within the scope of your example. Even this soporific policy will break down with the sooner-or-later collapse of the dollar hegemony, as we know the PTB will attempt to cut social spending first before slashing their precious Pentagon budget. Then we may well see a re-ignition of class struggle here.
I agree completely regarding the propaganda/mass psychology emitted by the corporate media: blame and shame, an entire world of it.
Regarding socialist economics, I have mixed conclusions so far. Some of it got quite scientific. I have heard that Soviet mathematics was very far ahead of Western mathematics in everything to do with economic planning, most particularly matrix algebra. When the USSR was destroyed this became part of the scientific spoils falling to capitalism, which promptly corrupted it to further the mathematics of globalization.
(Aside: consider the socialist planning that would be possible with today’s computation power, the internet, IT, just-in-time production and other current technology and methods… I believe this is exactly what the US is worried about China developing. How do you say, “We will bury you!” in Chinese?)
On other levels some socialist economics became very politicized, but in a different way than in the West. Arguments over this or that approach to market reforms, incentive programs, collectivization, cooperatives, etc., became poles around which a veiled kind of class struggle manifested, pushing policy left or right in specific sectors. I touched on this at several points in my posts this thread.
Lastly, while capitalist economics is largely distraction or worse, Marxism sets out to evaluate class society, economic relations and the making of revolutionary change scientifically. As a Marxist I have to say we are at least trying: at our best we can be excellent (but still have far to go); at our worst we’re human like anyone else and prey to projecting expectations, resting on our laurels (as Lone Wolf pointed out, quoting classics and calling it science) and so forth. It’s more than a bit difficult to be scientific when we can’t run control alongside experimental studies, repeat others’ results from the same conditions, etc.—the best we can do so far is be honest observers, immerse ourselves in the people’s struggles, and work with what we have to create “socialism with (your country here) characteristics.”
I’d say Marxism and socialist economics is scientific, but still developing. Any science has to develop, gain new insights—look at how far physics, biology, chemistry, cosmology and other sciences have developed since the Communist Manifesto was written in 1848. That’s the standard I’d like to see in any science of liberation. Even if we never quite reach that standard, just as with the Eduardo Galeano poem I quoted, so long as we are advancing in this direction we’re on the right path.

Posted by: Vintage Red | Dec 16 2015 0:52 utc | 251

@rufus magister, 167:
I take what you write as implicit in my posts. Complex and global as the topic is, for reasons of length I tried to let the works I linked to carry as much of it as possible.
I fully agree on the importance of the unsuccessful German Revolution, on the traitorous role of the German Social Democrats (linked to @57). Had the German Revolution succeeded, the Hungarian and likely also the Czechoslovak workers would’ve succeeded also, and WW2, instead of being “WW1 round 2”, would’ve instead been Mackinder’s Nightmare: socialist Eurasia lined up against the capitalist periphery of the US, UK and Japan (plus France, if still capitalist given the above). But back to the history we have.
I concur that none of the three alternatives Demian sketched is stable; two are capitalist and one represents the building of socialism while capitalism and scarcity still dominate globally, as I described. I am familiar with Trotsky’s *1905* and *The History of the Russian Revolution* (in the latter he went into depth on the economic developments you cite). I also linked to *The Revolution Betrayed* @39 and drew a significant part of my argument from it. Capitalism *is* the prerequisite for socialism, which is why so many revolutions and national liberation governments could at best achieve some form of state capitalism, mixed economy, or left nationalist state presiding over developing capitalism.
I’m with you on the counterrevolutionary overthrow in the USSR; the articles I linked to @39 give much detail to your brief description.
I respect Trotsky himself and have learned from his work—after all, he did lead the Red Army to victory. But I never aligned with the Fourth International, whose member organizations after his death only seemed to split, split and split further. The Trotskyists call me a Maoist; the Maoists call me an Anarchist; the Anarchists call me a Stalinist, and the Stalinists call me a Trotskyist. It has not escaped me that many of the above who over the years have called my analysis ragged around the edges are no longer themselves active in the struggle. Reality itself is pretty ragged around the edges.
I do understand your fear. I have come to the conclusion that US capitalism actually *wants* to run out the time on climate chaos in order to guarantee permanent scarcity. But as we know from history revolutionary windows of opportunity can open quite suddenly. Just as the Russian Revolution surprised everyone a century ago, I believe we here in the US might have our chance to rise as well. But we have to lay the groundwork now.

Posted by: Vintage Red | Dec 16 2015 5:25 utc | 253

@190 james
I have now read your link THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION – SABAN FORUM 2015 – rather the file at the end of that link which was contained in you link, Israel’s Syrian Blues, which provided a precis of the former. I found it very interesting to listen to all those Israelis letting their hair down. So thanks.

Posted by: jfl | Dec 16 2015 6:26 utc | 255

@245 Vintage
Reforming China’s SOEs … not much in this one.
The Myth of Chinese Capitalism

China’s constitution clearly states that the Chinese people will govern themselves via their people’s democratic dictatorship.
The other key philosophy stated in China’s constitution is that the CPC is authorized to use dictatorial powers to vanquish any anti-revolutionary imperialists and hegemonists (Westerners) and fight the exploiting classes (meaning capitalists), both inside China (fifth column compradors) and outside China (Western empire), who are all trying to overthrow the CPC (via Western international institutions, NGOs and internal and external psyops/blackops subversion).

That’s a bald recipe for domination by the ‘communist’ elite. Maybe some other cake will miraculousy pop out of the oven. I await the miracle.
These are both feel good, wanna believe booster articles. Hey, I wanna believe. We all wanna believe. But there is nothing here but the assurance that primary accumulation on the gigascale by a ‘communist’ elite will not result in what it always has done in the past.

Posted by: jfl | Dec 16 2015 8:39 utc | 257

@rufus magister, 256:
Sorry for the day’s delay; power outage last night. Rotting imperial infrastructure and all that…
I’m not sure I can call my influences “deviations” since that implies I have a specific line I’m straying from. I’m more open to critically acknowledging the contributions—and learning from the errors—of the many experiences of the world movement.
The *second* reason the 20th Century turned out as badly as it did was China’s turning its perfectly understandable revolutionary critique of Soviet political economy into a state-to-state struggle, splitting the world communist movement badly in the ‘60’s-‘70’s. That China and Russia are now spearheading the resistance to US hegemony under the PRC’s “capitalist road” leadership and Russia’s counterrevolutionary “state capitalism” raises irony to historic heights.
I too have read my share of Hobsbawm. Having an unusually long historical perspective for a USian, “long” and “short” centuries make perfectly good sense to me.

Posted by: Vintage Red | Dec 17 2015 23:26 utc | 259

@Noirette, 258:
Understood, re: socialists’ meaning of socialism vs. PTB usage, hammered into us via the corporate media. One of their information war weapons is hijacking the very terminology of revolution and twisting it into something completely opposite of its original meaning. “Tide—a revolution in laundry detergent!”
Marx, Engels and co. didn’t write much on the effects of capitalist and socialist economics on the environment I think because not many people were thinking in those terms back then. I remember hearing it said that folks then actually regarded factory skylines and resultant pollution *positively* because that meant prosperity, however narrowly defined. Were they alive and writing today I imagine they would address environmental concerns. Engels was very concerned with applying dialectic thinking to the natural sciences so I think our current climate challenges would’ve been on their radar.
I don’t pretend to be able to channel what they might have written, but my first guess would run along the following lines. The forces of production are not merely labor and capital blended by this or that technology or organizing principle, and include not merely the resources used in production, but also the land, sea, air and rest of the natural world all these things come from. Marx and Engels did define the crises that give rise to revolutions as being revolts of the forces of production against the relations of production—to my thinking this isn’t simply labor rising up against capital but also includes the reaction of the natural world to economic exploitation and development. I would certainly characterize ever-stronger droughts, storms, rising sea levels, etc. as Mother Earth rising up against the relations of production, and thus as part of the crisis necessitating revolution against capitalism.
I believe it was Mao who wrote that regarding contradictions among the people the task is to turn antagonistic contradictions into non-antagonistic ones. I would broaden this to say that socialist societies need to take the vicious exploitation of nature inherited from capitalist production—an antagonistic contradiction—and resolve it into a non-antagonistic contradiction, sustainable methods of production, including planetary cleanup of the mess we’re in. I for one don’t believe we’ll ever clean up the environment or turn the tables on climate chaos until we get rid of capitalism, most especially finance capital and limited liability corporations.
I do believe I follow you on finance, and agree. Money and finance should at most simply facilitate rational, just and sustainable economics rather than the parasitic, toxic and destructive role we now see.

Posted by: Vintage Red | Dec 17 2015 23:31 utc | 261

Apologies for the double post!

Posted by: Vintage Red | Dec 17 2015 23:31 utc | 263

VR at 259, 262 —
I was trying to be a little ironic with “deviation.” Sarcasm, especially in print, is a tough material to handle. I’ll get the hang of it eventually.
Your various interlocutors (at least the Stalinists and Trots) would have no doubt seen your multi-faceted position as an eclectic melange of errors. I got occasional accusations of workerism and anarchism. Former I never saw as a problem in a workers’ movement, the latter was more of an attitude. Reading Nietzsche aggravated it.
For contemporary history, a hundred-year period is quite long. Some might object to the differences in technologies and lifestyles, but this is chimerical, I would argue. The fundamental problem of the tendency to monopoly producers, overproduction and crisis remains the same.
For example, cheap mass-produced newspapers, magazines, and books, made possible by the steam rotary press, ca. 1850, was the real “Information Revolution.” The Internet puts the Sears, Roebuck Co. catalog, your Hearst newspaper, and Bell’s telephone on one handy device, which can emulate Underwood’s typewriter and Edison’s phonograph as well.
In addition to mass, speed is the other defining feature of industrial capitalism. The railroad was a quantum leap forward in land transportation, rapidly increasing carrying capacity and speed. The same with iron and steal steamers. Production equipment of course increased in speed, size, and output; mechanized weaving frames and spinning mules were larger and faster than the hand-powered equipment they replaced.
The great problem here is the subordination of human to machine. Water wheels and especially steam engines drove the factory. These centralized power supplies were under management’s control; engine speed set the pace of the machines’ attendants.
Nowadays, the machines setting the pace are electronic. The control may be looser (“Pay no attention to man behind the curtain”) but it is more comprehensive.
We may be reaching, however, a point where we have sufficient quantity accumulated so as to pass to quality in two specific areas. One anticipated by the early socialists, the other not even a possibility until the 1970’s. That would be environmental problems and the possibility of dehumanization.
I’ve only read some excerpts, but Engels’s first book, on The Condition of the Working Class in England discusses not only poor housing, but as pollution from industrial and human waste in the districts around the river. But I would allow, the productivist aspects of socialism, especially in building up Soviet industry but even within the labor movement broadly as well, has tended to prevail. Recently, however, Monthly Review and others are trying to beef up the “red-green” connection.
The second is the possibility of overwhelming individual consciousness via Direct neural interface. Climb into the Matrix now, all you early adopters. It’s why the Borg always creeped me out more than any other Star Trek villan.
Talk about machine-produced self-alienation….

Posted by: rufus magister | Dec 18 2015 1:26 utc | 265

Oops, the lectures I discussed in @266: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/intro.htm

Posted by: guest77 | Dec 18 2015 2:53 utc | 267

guest77 at 267 —
If I may, I’d recommend two classics. “The Communist Manifesto” is fundamental. Engels Socialism: Utopian & Scientific was the standard middle-brow basic theoretical text of the Second International.

Posted by: rufus magister | Dec 18 2015 3:32 utc | 269

@guest77, 266 & 268:
Guest77, you are absolutely correct that the *worst* fear of the capitalists was a USSR (or any big enough socialist society) that actually succeeded in building real socialism, “winning the battle of democracy” as Lenin put it in The State and Revolution. The CPSU’s heritage of dealing with things administratively rather than through class struggle dulled the Soviet working class’s ability to act on its own behalf over the decades, and they paid the price with interest. Even at the very end, the best defense CPSU loyalists could mount was brushed aside with extreme prejudice. What was needed at that point (long before, really) was an insurrectionary general strike and a renewal of the Revolution, but both the traditions and organizations for class conscious worker action were long gone or atrophied by then.
Democracy under capitalism has also been gutted since then, as you note. As with social/welfare spending, no need once the enemy system has been disposed with.
Catastrophic as the breakup of the USSR was, I think that trick will not work again. China watched and learned what needed to be learned, and few peoples will be quite as ideologically disarmed from now on when confronted with the empire’s false bait-and-switch promises.
Thank you for the link to Marx’s journalistic articles!

Posted by: Vintage Red | Dec 19 2015 22:48 utc | 271