New Zeal Blog Has Moved

Over the weekend my blog was upgraded and moved to a new address,

TrevorLoudon.com

Most of you will already be aware of this, and when you visit the old site you will find that you are automatically redirected to the brand new site.

This post is just to let my readers who subscribe with a blog reader such as Google Reader that the blog has moved - here's the new RSS feed so that you can update your blog reader to ensure that you continue to receive New Zeal posts on a regular basis: http://trevorloudon.com/feed/

Trevor

The Funny Side of World Economic Chaos

Kiwi comedian John Clarke (long moved to  Aussie) explains the world's economic problems.



Thanks to Philip.

"Act One" of the Egytian Revolution

Philip Marfleet

British academic and Socialist Workers Party member Philip Marfleet, on the Egyptian revolution - it ain't over yet.

From International Socialism April 4

Revolutions are invariably complex and lengthy processes. In the case of Iran, with which there are some striking similarities, protests which began in 1976 only took their full effect three years later with the fall of the Pahlavi regime. There were numerous episodes of advance and retreat of the students’ movement, the petty bourgeoisie of the bazaar, the clerical establishment, the national minorities and the peasantry, before sustained mass strikes expelled the shah.

These struggles threw up a host of forms of social organisation including local committees and workplace groups, some taking on a proto-Soviet character before they were dispersed by the Ayatollah Khomeini’s offensive.

There will be similar episodes in Egypt, as a movement initially animated by democratic demands addresses the possibility of further radical change—a generalisation of struggle that addresses the inequalities of the Mubarak era, the ownership of societal resources including industry and the land, and the problem of power wielded by the state itself.

The entry of the workers gives cause to believe that the Egyptian Revolution is indeed “growing over” into a movement for wider and historic change—that a process of permanent revolution with global implications is under way.

Yes indeed. This disaster, will have "global implications".

Communists instigated the Iranian revolution and worked with the Islamists to achieve it. Once in power the Islamists executed ed, imprisoned and exiled thousands  of communists.

The left does not intend to allow this to happen in Egypt. They aim to come out on top.

Glenn Predicts His Plans Will Make Left "Crap Their Pants"

Beck Ties Things Together and Hints at Future Plans

Iraqi Communists Generating Unrest to Ensure American Forces Quit Country

U.S. forces may win the war in Iraq, only to lose the peace to the country's communist party.

The Iraqi Communist Party is busily stirring up trouble,  to both ensure that American forces leave the country and to position themselves in order to best exploit the resulting power vacuum.

From the Communist Party USA's Peoples World

Eight years after the U.S. invaded Iraq, the Iraqi people are waging a grassroots fight for democracy and an economy that works for them.

For the sixth week in a row, Iraqis demonstrated last Friday in Baghdad's Tahrir Square and around the country, demanding jobs, public services, worker rights, civil rights and liberties, and an end to corruption. It is an unprecedented development for Iraq.

Since February 25, thousands have marched and rallied in nearly every one of Iraq's 18 provinces.
According to the General Federation of Iraqi Workers, they have come out "to protest the failure of the Iraqi state to listen to the Iraqis' demands."

The protests have led to the resignations of two provincial governors, the mayor of Baghdad and other officials.

A newly emerging nationwide Democratic Current is at the heart of this movement. Leaders say it is an expression of wide sectors of grassroots Iraqi society, including people who are not members of any organized group.

Local committees are being formed around the country, and preparations are under way for a national conference to be held in the next month or two, to lay the basis for "a sustainable organization."

Raid Fahmi - Communist Party leader and Iraqi Minister of Science & Technology

The Iraqi Communist Party is one of the key organizers of this movement... Raid Fahmi, a member of the ICP's leadership, said this "very diverse" mass movement opens a "very promising prospect" for his country.

At the local level, Fahmi noted, neighborhood "popular control" committees are being set up to monitor public services, investigate problems, meet with the authorities to get action, and supervise their actions.

"We believe these committees will have a very direct impact on the provision of services," he said.
This movement is also key to ending the U.S. occupation, Fahmi said.

A few weeks ago the government tried to evict the Communist Party and another party active in the protests from their Baghdad offices. The... effort backfired, generating considerable media coverage and popular support for the ICP. The government backed off, and the parties are expected to keep their offices.

Hints are being floated of keeping U.S. military forces in Iraq, at a string of U.S. bases around the country. Yet "very strong public opinion in Iraq will not accept foreign bases," Fahmi said. Mass political pressure will be needed to ensure an end to the U.S. occupation, he said.

Watcher’s Council Nominations: Low Budget Edition

From: The Watcher's Council




Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday.

This week’s Council contest is dedicated to Rep. Paul Ryan.

Council News:

Our own Bookworm’s new E-book, The Bookworm Turns: A Secret Conservative In Liberal Land is finally out, and is even better than I imagined it would be. Available at Amazon.

This week, Restoring Honor Starts Here, Monkey In The Middle and Maggie’s Notebook took advantage of my generous offer of link whorage and earned honorable mention status.

You can, too. Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

Simply e-mail me a link at rmill2k@msn.com with the subject heading ‘Honorable Mention’ no later than Monday 6 PM PST to be considered for our honorable mention category and return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week.

It’s a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members, while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

So, let’s see what we have this week….and don’t forget to tune in Thursday for this week’s Head to Head!

Council Submissions

• The Colossus of Rhodey – A perfect example of why Philly schools have the discipline issues they do
• The Noisy Room – The Descent of Evil Over America
• The Razor – Why I Don’t Think The Government deserves My Money This Year
• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – The Little Satan Posse
• Bookworm Room – “It’s always something — if it ain’t one thing, it’s another.”
• New Zeal – Leading Marxist Manning Marable Dies – Once Wrote, Obama “Has Read Left Literature, Including My Works”
• Rhymes With Right – Texas Lege Votes Down Disingenuous Solution To Education Budget Cut
• Joshuapundit - The Limits Of Forgiveness
• Right Truth – Bacon and Koran – Videos – Defending our Freedom of Speech
• VA Right - Obama Speech: ‘Lets Help Libya Just Like We Helped the Kurds’
• The Glittering Eye - Blue
• The Political Commentator – Is a government shutdown really a shutdown? Apparently it isn’t!
• Snapped Shot – Rally for Rights (And Terrorists)
• Simply Jews – Libya’s human rights record: somewhat funny

Honorable Mentions

• Monkey In The Middle – A New Definition Of Courage
• Maggie’s Notebook – Egypt: Salafist Muslim Brotherhood New Modesty Law – Egypt: Christians Must Submit to Islam
• Restoring Honor Starts Here – The Obama Narrative Part II

Non-Council Submissions

• The Foundry – Income Inequality, Round Two submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Gulag Bound – Nazi Political Biology: The Hotwiring of Power Politics, Naturalism, Environmentalism & Racism submitted by The Noisy Room
• Phyllis Chesler/FrontPage – The Goldstone Recantation submitted by The Razor
• The Best Defense/Crispin Burke – How to deal with Libyan ambiguity: Define the problem, not the end state submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Big Questions Online - Multiculturalism and its Discontents submitted by Bookworm Room
• Melanie Phillips – Richard Goldstone Recants; What Price The Israel Witch-Hunt Now? submitted by New Zeal
• James Pethokoukis – Paul Ryan’s revolution Would Finish Reagan’s submitted by Rhymes with Right
• Declaration Entertainment/Iowahawk – Eat The Rich! submitted by Joshuapundit
• Dan Riehl - Can The Obama Administration Fairly Try KSM At Gitmo? submitted by Right Truth
• Big Government/Seton Motley – General Motors – This is What Government Ownership Looks Like submitted by VA Right
• BeldarBlog – Kevin Drum Begins To Doubt His Cult Leader submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Reason - The 19% Solution submitted by The Political Commentator
• The Investigative Project On Terrorism – Turning The Revolution Islamist submitted by Snapped Shot
• Liberty’s Spirit – Free Speech is Not Important: The Contest in Congress to be Dumb, Dumber or Dumbest submitted by The Watcher
• Shrinkwrapped – Incoherence Compounded By Arrogance submitted by The Watcher
• Doug Ross – In the spirit of bipartisanship, Mr. Speaker, let the Senate Democrats shut the government down submitted by The Watcher

Enjoy!

Benjamin Barber - Gadaffi Shill Works With Obama Founded "Think Tank"

Benjamin Barber

On February 22, 2011, self proclaimed "internationally renowned political theorist" and Distinguished Fellow at the policy center Demos, Benjamin Barber released a statement announcing his resignation from the governing board of the Gadaffi Foundation.

Barber announced his resignation from the Gadaffi International Charity and Development Foundation, headed by Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi's son Saif al-Qaddafi, in protest at the "country-wide repression of protesters by the most barbaric means, and the public declaration of the Foundation's honorary chairman, Saif Qadaffi, endorsing the repression and rationalizing the massacre of protesters".

While Muammar Qadaffi's brutal repression of rebel forces, may have been been too much for wee Benjamin to stomach , the "internationally renowned political theorist" had no problems taking Gadaffi's money when the dictator's habitual sadism was less well publicized .

Even while leaving his master's employ, Barber still had kind words to say about his former idol.

Remember, Gadhafi is no Mubarak or Bashar al-Assad, a second or third generation bureaucratic heir to once revolutionary dictatorships. He is a founding revolutionary cut from the same cloth as Nasser and Castro, and his revolutionary rhetoric, if seemingly incoherent and irrelevant to the modern world, is authentic, rooted in the (mostly) vanished world of colonialism, imperialism, socialism and people's democracy.

Barber worked with and for the Gadaffi clan  for several years

Benjamin sits enthralled while Muammar reads from his wondrous "Green Book"

In a Washington Post article in  August 2007  "Gaddafi's Libya: An Ally for America?", Barber wrote;

Written off not long ago as an implacable despot, Gaddafi is a complex and adaptive thinker as well as an efficient, if laid-back, autocrat. Unlike almost any other Arab ruler, he has exhibited an extraordinary capacity to rethink his country's role in a changed and changing world.

I say this from experience. In several one-on-one conversations over the past year, Gaddafi repeatedly told me that Libya sought a genuine rapprochement with the United States ...

In all my public and private conversations with Gaddafi, including a roundtable moderated by David Frost and televised by BBC in March during which Gaddafi responded to unrehearsed questions, Gaddafi acknowledged his history of enmity with the West and did not deny Libya's erstwhile involvement in terrorism. But he spoke of a new chapter for Libya and backed it up with a commitment to societal change. He insisted that in the Libya that comes after him there would be no new Gaddafi but self-governance.

Barber was also among a small group of "democracy advocates and public intellectuals", including Joseph Nye, Anthony Giddens, Francis Fukuyama, and Robert Putnam, working under contract with the Monitor Group consulting firm to "interact with Col. Gaddafi on issues of democracy and civil society" and to help little  Saif "implement democratic reforms and author a more representative constitution for Libya".

In other words, Barber was Col. Gadaffi's PR man - a paid "shill" for a proven terrorist and  socialist dictator.

To be fair,  Barber's loyalty to Gadaffi probably went beyond money. As a  socialist himself, no doubt Barber really did believe he was advancing the radical cause by easing Gadaffi's relations with the U.S.

Benjamin Barber's affiliation to Demos are significant because the New York based "think tank" is an official partner of the notorious Washington DC based Institute for Policy Studies

Once described by security expert Brian Crozier as the "perfect intellectual front for Soviet activities which would be resisted if they were to originate openly from the KGB", I.P.S. has been strongly opposed to military action against Gadaffi's regime.

Demos, one of the nations premier leftist "think tanks" has close ties to Democratic Socialists of America, and,  until the organization morphed into a vast  array of semi-disguised clones,  ACORN.

Interestingly Demos' founding  1999-2000 Board of Trustees, included  an obscure Illinois State Senator named Barack Obama.

A few years later an equally obscure San Francisco communist radical named Van Jones would also join the Demos Board. Small world isn't it?

Demos 2009 report "Flying blind", page 3

Despite being so horribly disappointed by comrade Qadaffi, Benjamin Barber hasn't given up on socialism.

Less than a month after pulling the plug on comrade Qadaffi, Barber spoke at Democratic Socialists of America's Left Forum 2011, at Pace University New York, on a panel entitled "The Future of American Liberalism?"

Barber's co-panelists were D.S.A. leaders Stanley Aronowitz and Glenn Beck's favorite "metamucil muncher" Frances Fox Piven.

Allen West on Government Shutdown

Beck on Debt, Unions, Socialists, Frances Fox Piven, Israel, Van Jones.....

"Thousands of Dead Bodies"

Rich Rogers of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO speaking at yesterday's We Are One rally in Boston. 

The speaker is directly in front of the MA GOP headquarters.

Cuban Unionist Tours U.S. - Offers International Communist Labor Federation Support

According to the Communist Party USA's latest Peoples World ,  union workers at the Los Angeles Workers United hall, home of the Laundry, Distribution Centers and Skills and Manufacturing Workers, "listened with excitement" to an address by Gilda Chacon Bravo, a leader of the    former Soviet front, and still communist controlled, World Federation of Trade Unions.

Gilda Chacon Bravo

Chacon is the first Cuban trade union representative to be granted a visa to the United States in several years,  and is touring the country.

WFTU has 70 million affiliated members, with 150 organizations in Latin America alone. The U.S. and Canada are the only countries in the Western Hemisphere that have no affiliates.

Said Chacon;

"One of the main objectives of our tour is to have an exchange on labor issues here, and introduce the federation to the North American labor movement so we can support and show solidarity with your struggles. What is happening in Wisconsin and other parts of your country are opportunities that the U.S. working class should not miss" .

This is the time, she added, to unite for dignified jobs and confront the attacks on collective bargaining rights.

"The tactics that are being used against you, as workers, have been used on workers throughout Latin America. The blame is being placed on the workers, but we say the fault lies with those who caused the crisis, the transnational corporations and their neo-liberal policies."

Ms Chacon invited everyone present to the Trade Union Conference of the Americas to be held in August in Nicaragua. From Alaska to Patagonia, social organizations and workers who want to attend are welcome, "At this conference we'll join together with the goal of finding solutions to the common problems we face as workers" she said.

The Cuban trade unionist continued, "The most important result of these conferences is that attendees come to the conclusion that the current economic system can no longer offer us what we need and thus we must find other alternatives. If you ask me what system that would be, as a Cuban, I would say it is socialism."

Abayomi Azikiwe, Gilda Chacon Bravo, Detroit, March 11

In Detroit,   Gilda Chacon Bravo met with members of the united Auto Workers Union and members of the pro Cuba/North Korea Workers World Party, including local leader Abayomi Azikiwe.

No stranger to foreign visitors, Azikiwe was one of several W.W.P. activists to attend September 21, 2010, New York  meeting,  with President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Red Reps 6 Larry Agran, Irvine California Councilor and One Time Socialist Presidential Hopeful

Red Reps 5 here

Barack Obama was not the first Democratic Socialists of America-affiliated candidate to run for President of the United States of America.

Larry Agran

That honor belongs to several-time Irvine California mayor and city councilor Larry Agram.

In 1992, Larry Agran, already a controversial figure in Southern California  unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party nomination for President. Agran was generally ignored by by the media during his candidacy, though he initially polled as well as more nationally known leftists such as Iowa's Tom Harkin and fellow Californian Jerry Brown.

Democratic Party officials excluded Agran from most debates on various grounds, even having him arrested when he interrupted to ask to participate.

Two years earlier Agran had been "outed" as a member of the U.S.'s largest Marxist organization Democratic Socialists of America, by the socialists  own publication, Democratic Left.

DSA's Democratic Left, Jan./Feb. 1990, page 7

Perhaps the Democrats, only three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, weren't quite ready to have a Marxist on the their Presidential ticket ?

How times have changed.

Despite failing on the national stage, Larry Agran has had a big impact on the local scene.

As of 2010, Agran served as Mayor Pro Tem on the Irvine City Council. He is one of the most prominent Democrat politicians in Orange County, an area  famous for its conservatism, and undoubtedly one of the most powerful politicians in the county.

By the 1980s, Irvine was one of the fastest growing cities in California, a major center of aerospace, computer, and high-tech manufacturing - even deemed by  US News and World Report as  the "best place to live in America."

Larry Agran, a Harvard Law school educated San Fernando Valley native, moved to Irvine in 1975.

In 1978 Agran ran a very sophisticated (and successful) campaign for city council, backed by Tom Hayden's radical Campaign for Economic Democracy (C.E.D.).

About the same time, and not too far away, a young Barack Obama, was hanging around with the C.E.D. crowd at Occidental college, near Los Angeles.


In his early years on the council, Larry Agran, was minority of one. Portraying himself as a moderate environmentalist, he built up a following  by attacking the Irvine Company, which founded the planned city and owned about a third of its land.

Outside of Irvine, Agran founded the 1,000-member Local Elected Officials group, in 1983, to "promote local responses to non-local matters: world peace, apartheid, nuclear weapons, Central America..."

Agran's Bulletin of Municipal Foreign Policy carried articles like "Some tips for Building Nicaraguan Sister Cities" and "Think Globally, Sue Locally," as well as endorsements from the likes of D.S.A. member Noam Chomsky.

According to then conservative journalist, turned leftist Media Matters attack dog David Brock;

Under Agran's influence 900 resolutions passed around the country in favor of a nuclear weapons freeze; 118 laws banning nuclear weapons production in local jurisdictions, an effort that coincided with the failure of the freeze movement; refusals by 120 cities to cooperate in a civil defense program proposed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which forced the scuttling of the plan; more than 100 policies prohibiting cities from links with firms doing business in South Africa; 1,300 sister-city arrangements between American cities and foreign cities, "especially so-called adversary cities," as Agran has phrased it; and 22 local declarations of "sanctuary" for Salvadoran refugees, a political movement designed to foster opposition to US policy in Central America.

Agran was quoted as saying that the ultimate aim of the movement is to "take back foreign policy from the federal government."

Agran spoke of the "illegal US wars in Vietnam and Grenada," advocated an immediate, unilateral ban on nuclear weapons testing, and described the US policy of support for the anti communist Nicaraguan resistance as "a policy that ultimately had as its objective the killing of Nicaraguan citizens and the violent overthrow of their popular revolution."

Agran even called called for the entire budget of President Reagan's "Strategic Defense Initiative" to be used to "help cities cope with growing traffic problems."

Yet despite all this, Agran was time and time re-elected in a county that gave Ronald Reagan and George Bush I, the highest votes in the U.S.

Agran was helped all along by a fawning press and the fact that he usually outspent his opponents by many fold.

As one local blogger put it;

It's become conventional wisdom that Agran--one of Orange County's most unethical, pompous and dictatorial public figures--wins because Irvine's residents are too busy to focus attention on local politics.

And that's the problem. Larry Agran and other leftist local politicians are able to have national impact, because many conservatives just do not see the importance of local races. Believe me - the socialists do.

Hopefully, enough Americans will wake up to correct that mistake.

Red Reps 7 here

Beck on the Middle East, America and Synchronized Trouble

Courtesy of The Daily Beck

Pledge of Allegiance

Thanks to Tom.

ElBaradei's Agenda: War With Israel, Socialism at Home

"Democracy" has come to Egypt.

From Ynet

Former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who had previously announced his intentions to run for the presidency of Egypt, said Monday that “if Israel attacked Gaza we would declare war against the Zionist regime."

In an interview with the Al-Watan newspaper he said: "In case of any future Israeli attack on Gaza - as the next president of Egypt – I will open the Rafah border crossing and will consider different ways to implement the joint Arab defense agreement."

Discussing his agenda for Egypt, ElBaradei said that distribution of income between the different classes in Egypt would be his most important priority if he were to win the upcoming elections.

"Where Do You Go To...."

One of the great songs of the '60s.

Ann Barnhardt Flays Lindsey Graham

Ann Barnhardt rebuts ultra RINO Senator Lindsey Graham's recent  anti free speech remarks regarding  the Florida Koran burning controversy.

One of the most spirited,  gutsy and intelligent  defenses of free speech you are ever likely to hear.

After watching this, Lindsey "Jackass" Graham,  will certainly be left "blubbering in the men's room."

Canada Next?

From today's Peoples World

Blaine-Washington. Union members from Canada and the United States rallied at Peace Arch Park on the U.S.-Canada border, April 2, cheering calls to defend collective bargaining rights and booing every mention of union-busters like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Canada's Tory Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The crowd held small placards emblazoned with U.S. and the Canadian flags and the words, "Working Families Standing Together. We are ONE!"

Jeff Johnson, president of the Washington State Labor Council, told the crowd,

"Corporate America has declared war on the labor movement all across the United States."

Wall Street banks and firms sit on $7 trillion in deposits, refusing to invest in job creation while whining that the nation is "broke" and must accept cutbacks, layoffs and austerity, he charged.

Jabbing his fist in the air, Johnson added, "He was talking about union rights. We must torque on that arc! We've got to bend it  down!"

He led the crowd in a chant:  "We are union! We are one!"

Jim Sinclair, president of the B.C. Federation of Labor, said Canadian workers are facing a similar nightmare of unionbusting attacks by the B.C. provincial government and Harper. Canada is in the midst of a national election set for May 2 with Harper, now heading a minority government seeking to win majority control of parliament.

"Stephen Harper with a majority is our Scott Walker," Sinclair said, as the crowd erupted in boos. "We can't let it happen!"

"We can't fund our schools and hospitals. That's upside down. You've got to increase taxes on corporations. No one gave us anything we didn't fight for. Not one thing! Are you ready to fight?"

The crowd roared, "Yes!"

Susan Lambert, president of the British Columbia Federation of Teachers, said organized labor is "building a movement that is global in scope."

"We stand here in solidarity with the people of Wisconsin," she said. "Governor Walker is targeting teachers. Why? Because they know an educated population will not tolerate these huge disparities in income."

Dale Anderson, a member of the Amalgamated Transit Workers Local 519 in Wisconsin, said, "Scott Walker awoke a sleeping giant. Hundreds of thousands of union members and their supporters have joined the fight. We will not be denied victory."

He announced that the grassroots movement just filed 21,700 signatures to force a recall election of his state senator, Republican Dan Kapanke, a supporter of Walker's union-busting law now blocked by a judge's restraining order. "He's the first to go!" Anderson shouted.

Barbara Byrd, sec.-treas. of the Oregon AFL-CIO, came with 40 other union members on a bus from Portland. "This is a pivotal time when we have the opportunity to seize the initiative," she told the World.

"Scott Walker could be a great gift in terms of our political effort if we can harness the anger of our members" in the 2012 elections.

Stephen Von Sychowski, a member of the Young Communist League of Canada, said "It showed that for the working class there are no borders...They attack workers on both sides of the border so we must stand together."

Communists Understand They Are in a War for America - So Should You!

Communist Party USA leader Sam Webb lays out the consequences  of  the escalating  "civil war" for American public opinion,  in today's Peoples World.

This is a moment of heightened class and democratic struggle. The signs are everywhere - not least in states in the nation's heartland. It isn't a time for the fainthearted.

The Republican right is squeezing labor and other sectors of the people's movement at the federal, state and local level. Nothing like it has occurred in the post-World-War-II period. And we haven't seen the worst of it.

Public workers are at the center of this attack to be sure, but it also reaches beyond them to the entire working class and people.

While right-wing Republicans are doing the dirty work, not far behind, pulling the strings where necessary, are major sections of the capitalist class.

The .. aim - and this is what makes this crisis response from the top layers of capital different - is to strategically undermine labor's power in the political arena, much like it has done to labor in the field of collective bargaining.

If successful, it would leave the organized section of the working class, the main social force combating right-wing extremism, a badly weakened actor in U.S. politics and society.

But as Robert Burns said about "the best laid schemes o' mice an' men," they go oft astray. Neither labor nor its allies is rolling over and throwing in the towel. Instead, a working class led counteroffensive is emerging - so much so that it is fair to say a new phase of a struggle is afoot, in which labor and its allies could turn the tables decisively in their favor.

The battle in Wisconsin electrified (for good reasons) the whole country. But the counteroffensive is not just Wisconsin - it is national in scope, diverse in form, creative in tactics, and united in action. This nationwide tapestry of struggle is multi-threaded, woven in varied patterns, loops and colors.

It is accompanied by a change in class mood, feeling and consciousness the likes of which we have not seen in recent decades. In the felt experience of tens of millions, capitalism isn't working for working people, the American Dream is crumbling, something better is needed.

The counteroffensive in my view dates back to the 2006 elections, where labor and its allies scored a victory and thus threw the Bush administration on the defensive for the first time.

It continued in 2008 when tens of millions danced in unison on the political stage and elected an African American president who promised a u-turn from the far-right policies of the Bush years.

There was an unfortunate lull in this counteroffensive in the first two years of the new administration, during which time the right and corporate class regrouped and went immediately into attack mode. But the lull is over. Labor's counteroffensive is resurfacing in a strikingly new and promising way.

This augurs well for the future, even though Republicans at the state and federal level, fresh from a victory at the polls last fall, are pressing their advantage.

In the coming months, the GOP because of its legislative majorities may register some victories, but they will be short lived.

In politics, winning and losing isn't a matter of simple arithmetic, not simply a matter of tallying up what was won and what was lost. Rather, it depends on which side is able to expand its support, deepen its unity, and capture the initiative. It also depends on which side is best able to frame the debate and win the battle for public opinion. And on these counts, labor and the people's movements are scoring well.

Already casting a long and ever-present shadow over the nation's politics, economics and public discourse is the 2012 elections.

No struggle has the same possibility to rearrange the political balance of forces in a progressive direction as does the 2012 elections and its outcome. No other struggle has the same possibility to throw the working class and people's counteroffensive onto an entirely new forward trajectory.

Labor may have fewer financial resources in 2012, but its army of activists will be far bigger and its ground game will be bolder.

As we dig into today's struggles, it's not too early to be thinking about what has to be done to defeat right-wing extremism at the polls next year.

The Communists and their Democratic Party allies/minions certainly do see this as a war. If the left wins the 2012 elections, it is hard to ever see America recovering. The left will establish a complete monopoly on power and proceed to squeeze the last vestiges of life from the American economy and people.

If the Tea Party and patriotic forces can take both take over the GOP and win in 2012, America - and the West,  has a fighting chance of survival.

Those are the stakes. The communists understand that. So must we.

The Descent of Evil Over America

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

And thy face is Samantha Power... Should Obama win a second term in 2012, it is strongly rumored that Samantha Power will become our next Secretary of State with Hillary Clinton declining to serve another term. Clinton, a stalwart progressive/Marxist, was bad enough. Power, the wife of America's Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein, is an unapologetic anti-semite and a monster extreme. Evil has unfurled its vast wings over America and the darkness is threatening a rapid descent. If only the good die young, America's time may have come if this event comes to fruition. Conservatives must win the election in 2012 if America is to survive as we have always known it.

I hate to break it to everyone, but Glenn Beck was right once again. The Responsibility to Protect Doctrine raises it's malevolent countenance bearing a striking resemblance to Stephen King's horror laden thriller "It." A chilling smile of bowel-watering ferocity is bearing down on the State of Israel. Power famously summized the following:

"What we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing — or investing, I think, more than sacrificing — billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line.

Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. But, sadly, we don’t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant to, anyway. It’s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders] who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people. And by that I mean what Tom Freidman has called “Sharafat.” I do think in that sense, both political leaders have been dreadfully irresponsible. And, unfortunately, it does require external intervention."

And long before the anointing of Power comes to pass, the UN has threatened to deem and pass a global decree for Palestine if Israel does not concede a state to them by September of this year. From the New York Times:

With revolutionary fervor sweeping the Middle East, Israel is under mounting pressure to make a far-reaching offer to the Palestinians or face a United Nations vote welcoming the State of Palestine as a member whose territory includes all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

It's like thunder and lightning as the New World Order roars to the forefront and overshadows God's chosen people. And in a test worthy of David and Goliath, Israel will fight once again for its survival and America finds herself on the wrong side. It would seem our progressive leaders have chosen to side with the darkness rising over the Middle East.

Terresa

Allen West Sets the bar Where it Should Be.

 Imagine the day when Allen West is the norm, rather than the exception in US politics.

"Sha-ri-a in the UK"

Beck on Sharia in America

Courtesy of The Daily Beck

Leading Marxist Manning Marable Dies - Once Wrote, Obama "Has Read Left Literature, Including My Works"

Manning Marable

One of America's leading academic Marxists, Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University,  Manning Marable,  has died,  aged 60.

One of the most influential  black radicals of his era, Manning Marable was both activist and academic, playing leadership roles in several Marxist organizations and authoring  numerous books and articles, including  a soon to be released biography of Malcolm X .

Marable  even claimed the President of the United States Barack Obama as one of his readers.

In the December 2008 issue of British Trotskyist journal Socialist Review Marable wrote. 

 What makes Obama different is that he has also been a community organiser. He has read left literature, including my works, and he understands what socialism is. A lot of the people working with him are, indeed, socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party or as independent Marxists. There are a lot of people like that in Chicago who have worked with him for years...

One of Marable's first confirmed radical affiliations was with the 1970s Marxist group New American Movement, founded mainly by veterans of the Students for a Democratic Society and the Communist Party USA. Marable's wife Leith Mullings (Feminists for Peace and Barack Obama) comes from a Communist Party background.

Marable was an early  member of  Democratic Socialists of America after it was founded in 1982 and by 1984 was a D.S.A. vice chair, alongside the likes of far left Democratic congressman Ron Dellums,  San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Harry Britt and Washington DC City Councilor Hilda Mason.

Like many socialists Marable was happy to work with communists. In November 1989 he addressed the 10th anniversary conference of the Communist Party controlled U.S. Peace Council, alongside two well known D.S.A. affiliates, Michigan  Congressman John Conyers and his Vermont colleague Bernie Sanders.

Marable was an almost annual speaker at D.S.A's Socialist Scholars Conferences in New York - which Barack Obama is known to have attended in the early 1980s.

In 1992, a new Marxist organization Committees of Correspondence was formed when a third of the Communist Party broke away to link up with DSAers, Trotskyists, Maoist, leftist Democrats and anarchists in an attempt to modernize and broaden the U.S. left. Marable became a co-chair of the new coalition.

Through C.O.C. Marable got involved in the LINKS network. This was an Australian based publication designed to link the Cubans,  former East German and third world communists  with Trotskyists and Maoists, black radicals, anarchists and "green" activists to form new leftist parties in several countries based on the model of the very successful (and now ruling) Brazilian Workers Party.

Interestingly President Obama has worked to forge strong ties to the Brazilian Workers Party leadership since assuming office.

In 1994  Marable was one of many D.S.A. and C.O.C. activists behind the New Party - a crypto socialist grouping aimed at nudging the Democratic Party to the left. While it didn't last long the New Party helped propel its best known members Barack Obama and DSAer/Democrat Illinois Congressman Danny Davis onto the national stage.

In June, 1996 Manning Marable led a delegation of fifteen prominent African Americans to Fidel Castro's  Cuba . Members of the delegation included Marable's wife : Leith Mullings , Professor of Anthropology, City University of New York; writer/editor Jean Carey Bond; political theorist Clarence Lusane; Columbia University Chaplain Jewelnel Davis; and DSAer Michael Eric Dyson, Visiting Professor of African American Studies, Columbia University.

During Marable's Cuba sojourn, he met many government officials, intellectuals and community leaders who as well as  having a lengthy conversations with Assata Shakur aka Joanne Chesimard an escaped terrorist cop killer from the U.S.

After meeting Chesimard, who is black, Marable wrote;

The struggle to destroy racism still remains a central challenge in Cuba: but on balance, the Cubans are far more honest about their shortcomings, and have achieved greater racial equality for Blacks than we have in the U.S....

In the late in 1990s Marable joined activists from D.S.A., C.O.C., Communist Party USA and other Marxist groups to found the Black Radical Congress. There is no evidence that Barack Obama attended the B.R.C.'s founding conference in Chicago in June 1998, but Obama's Marxist pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright as certainly there, as was future Obama "Green Jobs Czar" Van Jones.

On October 30 and 31, 1998 the radical  Brecht Forum celebrated the 150th Anniversary of the Communist Manifesto" at Cooper Union's Great Hall, New York.

Individual endorsers of the event included Manning Marable.

In 2006 -7 several radical groups including D.S.A., C.O.C., Communist party USA and several former leaders of the terrorist Weather Underground including Jeff Jones, Mark Rudd, and Obama allies Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn  to form a new radical umbrella organization Movement for a Democratic Society.

MDS February 2007. Mark Rudd far left, Jeff Jones, second from right, Manning Marable, center.

At M.D.S.'s February 2007 meeting in New York, Marable was elected Chair of the new organization. M.D.S. never really did take off, but it did last long enough to spawn an offshoot Progressives for Obama, in time for the 2008 Presidential election.

Manning Marable packed a lot of Marxism into his 60 short years.

His socialist legacy lives on on countless University campuses and political movements across the  across the nation - even  in the Oval Office itself.

Think Communism's Not that Bad? Think Again.

Mind Control. The New York Times has an article on the recently re-opened "National Museum of China," located in Tiananmen Square, the location of the bloody Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, 1989. Ironically, but not surprisingly, the museum contains not one mention of the incident. I have included a few excerpts from the article below. The discussion of the rampant revisionist history in this museum is painfully amusing - those same people who would wish socialism and communism upon the United States would hardly be delighted at the prospect of complete State control of mind and freedom...

At the elaborately renovated National Museum of China in Tiananmen Square, visitors interested in the recent history of the world’s fastest rising power can gaze at the cowboy hat that Deng Xiaoping once wore when he visited the United States, or admire the bullhorn that President Hu Jintao used to exhort people to overcome hardship after the Sichuan earthquake in 2008. But if their interests run to the Cultural Revolution that tore the country apart from 1966 to 1976 and resulted in millions of deaths, they will have to search a back corner of the two-million-square-foot museum, which will complete its opening this month, for a single photograph and three lines of text that are the only reference to that era...

In the 1990s, museum curators proposed a much franker look at the problems that led to the current era of reform. Initially, they designed a section called “10 years of tortuous development” on the 1950s and ’60s, including the Great Leap Forward’s devastating famine, according to Kirk Denton, a professor at Ohio State University who is writing a book on China’s museums. Curators proposed a similar section in the current exhibit, arguing that this era was decades in the past and the party was now strong enough to withstand criticism. That idea was rejected, however, after a lengthy debate, according to Ministry of Culture officials. In the end, the famine, widely regarded as the worst in recorded history, is only euphemistically mentioned by the phrase that “the project of constructing socialism suffered severe complications.” The Cultural Revolution was reduced to the photograph and brief caption.

“We wanted to celebrate China,” Mr. Tian said. “I think that’s understandable.”

Would encourage you to read the entire article for a reminder of why I am constantly dealing with the subject of Communism, internationally - but particularly as it affects the United States.

Obama's First Campaign Ad for 2012