30 March 2018

25-29 March 2018: a Bold Challenge to the Imperial Death Cult


Disclosure: as a Communist, a former competitive shooter, a Regular Army veteran (active duty 1959-1962) and a veteran of the Civil Rights, Alternative Press, Anti-Vietnam-War and Back-to-the-Land movements, I remain firmly committed to the Second Amendment right of armed self defense, especially now with the Trump-emboldened JesuNazis and their fascist allies running amok, frequently with police protection. Nevertheless... 

AT ITS EXISTENTIAL CORE, the ongoing U.S. protest against the legal availability of firearms notoriously favored by mass murderers is the nation's first genuinely widespread outcry against the imperial death cult of kamikaze Capitalism.

The protest's potential significance therefore goes far beyond its immediate demands because it includes a definitively revolutionary potential few dare acknowledge. Henri Giroux does so indirectly by noting in a new essay that such "momentary protests" could "become broad-based movements." However, as I write these lines (26 March 2018), most other Left-leaning commentators and public intellectuals have remained curiously silent on this matter. In all probability they see the protest's potential as clearly as I do -- indeed how could they not? But they are no doubt terrified to silence by the professional and socioeconomic consequences of violating the ever-more-ruthlessly enforced taboo against acknowledging, even obliquely,  that revolution is our only alternative -- that if we are to survive as a viable species on a livable planet, we must overthrow Capitalism before it murders us all

We as socialists and particularly as Marxists should therefore be asking whether the legitimate fear and fury U.S. high school students are expressing in response to their repeated victimization by mass murderers might evolve into the class consciousness that is prerequisite to such a revolution. It is obvious to us as enemies of Capitalism that if these students are to eliminate the root cause of the atrocities against which they mobilize -- specifically the deadly combination of unyielding hopelessness, murderous rage and conditioned moral imbecility that is Capitalism's unique legacy -- it is Capitalism against which these students and their international comrades must ultimately arise and do battle.

This is not to ignore or downplay the other important issues raised by the form and content of the students' campaign. These include the campaign's limited focus, specifically the fact the students' are apparently unable or unwilling to recognize that school shootings -- like the murders of unarmed suspects by the Empire's militarized local police --  are domestic manifestations of the endlessly repeated atrocities that have become the defining reality of life and death anywhere the Imperial United States has its boots on the ground. A corollary issue is thus the fact the majority of student protestors seem to be children of the One Percent's white Ruling Class vassalage or at least of the white petite bourgeoisie. This of course puts the primary focus on mostly white upscale victims -- which some of the protestors themselves admit is one of the primary reasons their activism has been gifted with such lavishly affirmative publicity by the Mainstream Media propaganda machine. The other reason for the outpouring of favorable publicity is the strategically timely boost the protest is giving to -- and in return getting substantial support from -- the decades-long Ruling Class campaign for forcible proletarian* disarmament, for details of which scroll down to the linked report's final dozen paragraphs.

Obviously the protestors are prime targets for co-optation, an effort Time magazine's disclosures in the preceding link tell us is already well underway.

Meanwhile two of the world's most influential journals of women's fashion have awarded protest leader Emma González the coveted  laurels of...

(To read the rest, go here.)

25 March 2018

Weekend Update 24/3/18: Can We Escape Doomsday?

New Study Proves Capitalism's Apocalyptic Deadliness
"Human destruction of nature is rapidly eroding the world’s capacity to provide food, water and security to billions of people, according to the most comprehensive biodiversity study in more than a decade."  Comment: our Capitalist  overlords' murderous exploitation of the environment and contempt for our Motherland Planet Earth also proves their moral imbecility. Obviously their attitude is rape the world now while they can and fuck the future because by the time the apocalypse peaks, they'll  already be dead. Which suggests a new name for what is destroying us: Kamikaze Capitalism.  
    

     Bolton's Appointment Could Mean Apocalypse Is Inescapable
"Eighteen years after the Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore decision and 15 years after Bush's invasion of Iraq, too much of the world is what John Bolton and his PNAC friends have made it: a smoldering crater stinking of permanent war, surrounded by refugees and choking on austerity to pay the butcher's bill."
See also: "Bolton is expected to take a hardline stance against...Cuba and Venezuela and Nicaragua..." And especially this:
"...the Empire can now either fold or double down. If it decides to fold, war will be averted and meaningful negotiations finally entered into. If it doubles down, something the Neocons always do, then this means war with Russia."  Comment: it also means war with China, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Vietnam, ultimately with most of the rest of the world. Thus the de facto Fourth Reich of the Empire will either be mercilessly (and often vengefully) crushed as was its Third Reich forefather or -- far more likely given the Empire's Christian belief in destruction as salvation -- it will deliberately nuke Earth into a bug planet.
  


Christian Theocrats Again Prove Their Hatred of Women
      Mississippi Now Has Worst Anti-Abortion Law
"Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed into law the United States’ most stringent abortion restrictions...the starkest example of how...attacks on reproductive rights are growing in both number and stringency throughout the United States."
 
Ohio Seeks Death Penalty for Abortion Doctors, Patients 
"(Ohio Republicans are pushing legislation) that would allow physicians and those who undergo (abortions) to be charged with murder, which is punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty." 

Nebraska Law Would Deny Impoverished People Family Planning
"...a (Republican) proposal denying Title X funds to any health center that performs, counsels about, or refers for abortion services...would block access to care for nearly 28,000 Nebraskans who rely on Title X for family planning and reproductive health care. 

                 
Border Patrol Nullifying Constitutional Rights of 66% of U.S. Population
  “...100 miles into the interior, across the entire perimeter of the country...(an area) home to two-thirds of the U.S. population...(the Border Patrol has unlimited)...authority to board and search any vehicle, bus, or vessel without a warrant and (demand) occupants..."


(to read the rest, go here.)