By Ian Welsh, ianwelsh.net
{With original threads, and comments by members of Links for Wildly Left} 

2011 DECEMBER 12
 

Seriously, listening to all the progressives either supporting the payroll tax rebate extension (an attack on Social Security) or saying that Cameron should have signed on to a forced austerity pact, I am reminded how mind  numbingly stupid and partisan these people are.  Scum.  Evil. Stupid. I could have a small amount of respect for them if they were getting millions in order to sell out the people they say they care about, but many of them do it for free and the most of the rest do it for peanuts. Read more…

By BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
 

The classic government models of “fascism” are approaching 80 and 90 years old (Germany and Italy, respectively), regimes from a different world. Today, fascism looks like…us. And American fascism’s leaders need not be Aryan, or even pale. “The Obama administration insisted on keeping the language which permitted American citizens to be detained by the military without trial.”  So, let’s update the historical record: Obama is the First Black Fascist President of the United States.

“Our entire system fits that description and we see it in the decisions made by Barack Obama and the rest of American political leadership.” Read more…

Bill Van Auken, wsws.org

The White House has used the imminent withdrawal of all but a handful of US troops from Iraq to promote Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. The president’s strategists are conducting a cynical propaganda operation aimed at simultaneously identifying him with the military and pushing the claim that the pullout is a fulfillment of his 2008 campaign promises.

The president used the visit of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to the White House Monday to proclaim, “After nearly nine years, our war in Iraq ends this month.” Today, he and his wife Michelle fly to Fort Bragg, North Carolina to deliver an address to a captive audience of American soldiers. Read more…

Obama and the GOP House of Horrors Show: made for each other, to fool the people.

By BAR executive editor Glen Ford

Having shown his hand over the last three years as an eager – although often spurned – partner in Republican austerity politics, and a war-maker who could make George Bush blush, President Obama will seek reelection with bankers’ money while pretending to remain “infuriated” with Wall Street. The banksters are in on the scam, since “nothing can match Obama’s crowning glory: the permanent bailout of finance capital.” The Republican candidate, whoever it is, will certainly spout an unambiguously pro-business line. But, “a GOP gaggle that savages itself for the privilege of singing the praises of the rich can only bring down the wrath of the people on the bankers’ heads.” Wall Street knows Obama is their true “shining knight.” Read more…

Part 3  (From our archives)

Note to TGP readers: We recently published some materials by Steven Pinker on issues such as violence, the nature of humans, and the prospects for our species and the world. We see this man as a creative and original intellect, but have substantive problems and reservations with his political positions (which proves that even geniuses can be awfully wrong when it comes to sorting out human affairs). In essence we place him in the category of mainstream liberalism, with powerful elements of Cold War imperial apologism on behalf of a “Pax Americana”. The author of this piece, C. Talbot, has some more to say about Pinker, in the context of fellow evolutionary psychologists.—Eds.

By Chris Talbot, wsws.org

This is the conclusion of a three-part series comprising a lecture by WSWS correspondent Chris Talbot to meetings of the International Students for Social Equality in Britain. Part 1 was posted on June 17 and Part 2 on June 18.

Evolutionary Psychology versus Marxism

Now we turn to areas where there have apparently been conflicts between Darwinian biology and Marxism. Firstly we consider those scientists who claim that biology can be used to explain all social phenomena. This was a strong tendency in the 19^th century after Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species appeared.

Here we link up to Marx’s comment in the footnote I cited at the start. Marx writes about what he calls “the abstract materialism of natural scientists.” He had in mind such figures as Ludwig Buchner, the German scientist who popularised atheism and a crude version of materialism. He attempted to apply concepts from natural science to history, of which he understood little. For Marx, social and ideological processes needed to be understood in terms of the “productive organs of man” and a materialist theory of history, and not by the application of abstract biological concepts. Read more…

Part 2 (From our archives) 
THE WAR OF IDEAS NEVER RESTS BECAUSE IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES. 

By Chris Talbot – wsws.org
This is the second of a three-part series comprising a lecture by WSWS correspondent Chris Talbot to meetings of the International Students for Social Equality in Britain. Part 1 was posted on June 17 and Part 3 on June 19. 

There is a wealthy and powerful movement of the Christian right in the United States that has, and still is, attempting to stop Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution being taught in schools as the basis of all biological science. It has done this by putting forward a completely unscientific defence of religious obscurantism, generally based on literal interpretations of the Bible. At first this was known as creationism. By the 1980s as many as 27 states in the US had proposed legislation that, whilst it couldn’t oppose Darwin being taught, demanded that so-called creation science was taught as well. Creationism was obviously religious. It proposed creation of the universe a few thousand years ago, a big flood, etc., so in 1987 its teaching was ruled to be illegal by the Supreme Court. As a result of the American Revolution, there is a separation of church and state and religion cannot be taught in schools, as it is in Britain. Read more…

Part 1 (From our archives)
By Chris Talbot, wsws.org

This is the first of a three-part series comprising a lecture by WSWS correspondent Chris Talbot to meetings of the International Students for Social Equality in Britain. Part 2 was posted on June 18 and Part 3 on June 19.

We have organised these meetings of the International Students for Social Equality in honour of Charles Darwin from a different standpoint from the many other bicentenary events. We want to bring out the connection between Darwin and that other great thinker of the mid-19^th century, Karl Marx.

Charles Darwin

The importance of Marx hits you when you take in the events of the last few months. We are now in a world economic crisis comparable to, if not more severe than, that of the 1930s, which will have a major effect on all of our futures. Current economic theory completely failed to predict this crisis. The economists cannot explain how it happened and have no answer to it [1]. In contrast, Karl Marx spent much of his life developing an economic analysis that explains the inherent instability of capitalism and provides a scientific basis for the development of the socialist working class movement. Read more…

By Tom Carter, wsws.org

Arizona’s Gov. Jan Brewer

The announcement Monday by the US Supreme Court that it will review a decision striking down provisions of Arizona’s unprecedented anti-immigrant law casts a shadow over what had been considered historically settled questions affecting the democratic rights of the entire population.

Arizona’s reactionary Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (Arizona Senate Bill 1070) was passed by the state legislature in April of last year in the midst of a campaign led by the Tea Party to whip up nationalist and xenophobic sentiment. It was struck down in part by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year. Read more…