AMERICAN DUPLICITY

GARY LEUPP—One might argue that the U.S. has, through its support for the coup nine years ago, patronage of the current regime, and its vast market for cannabis, heroin and cocaine, helped produce this desperate exodus of Central Americans to the border. People with a hard choice: stay home, let the kids get recruited into a gang, killing or get killed while at least drawing steady pay. Or flee north, facing dangerous challenges, and pray for North American compassion at the end of the road. Anything for safety, food and shelter.

ANNA PIGOTT—By naming capitalism as a root cause, on the other hand, we identify a particular set of practices and ideas that are by no means permanent nor inherent to the condition of being human. In doing so, we learn to see that things could be otherwise. There is a power to naming something in order to expose it.

PATRICK MARTIN—The election results set the stage for a further shift to the right in the whole structure of official politics, regardless of the broader shift to the left among working people and young people. The Democratic Party ran on a right-wing, pro-capitalist program, offering no significant improvements in jobs, living standards and social benefits for the working class, and it began seeking an accommodation with Trump even before its victory in the House of Representatives was projected.

ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH—To embark on a war-economy route, Iran needs, first and foremost, to revive the real (value-producing) sector of its economy, that is, manufacturing and agricultural activities. These real-value and employment generating activities, which are the physical or material sources of the wealth of a nation, as the classical economist Adam Smith put it, have become dormant under President Rouhani—largely by a persistent and out-of-control barrage of imports, both legal and illegal.

JAY JANSON—Paul Craig Roberts, former editor of the Wall Street Journal, and Undersecretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan, in his article, The Looting Machine Called Capitalism, wrote,
“Americans are the least exceptional people in human history. Americans have no rights at all. We hapless insignificant beings have to accept whatever capitalists and their puppet government impose on us. And we are so stupid we call it ‘Freedom and Democracy America.’”