By David Cromwell, Media Lens (UK)

Sometimes we get so sick of the phrase ‘history in the making’ that the brain tends to switch off. What is it this time?, we sigh. A new high-tech piece of military technology that will boost US killing power? A big jump in a newspaper’s online advertising revenue? The world’s best footballer, Lionel Messi, joining ‘an exclusive list of adidas athletes to have their own signature product’? Sometimes the ‘history’ in question only stretches back a few years, maybe a century or two. Only very occasionally, if the claim is truly deserved, does it strech back to the earliest era of written records.

But now, with humanity’s huge impact on the planet’s climate becoming ever clearer, we need to go back several million years. Because climate-related news of history being made are about the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) reaching 400 parts per million (ppm). The last time CO₂ was this high was probably 4.5 million years ago, before modern humans even existed.

Throughout recorded history, up till the Industrial Revolution, CO₂ was much lower at around 280 ppm. But large-scale industrial and agricultural activity since then has seen humanity profoundly alter the make-up of the atmosphere and even the  stability of Earth’s climate.

‘We are creating a prehistoric climate in which human societies will face huge and potentially catastrophic risks,’ said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics.

[pullquote] ‘It is irresponsible not to mention climate change. … The environment in which all of these storms and the tornadoes are occurring has changed from human influences (global warming).’ [/pullquote]

According to Bob Watson, former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former UK government chief scientific adviser:

‘the world is now most likely committed to an increase in surface temperature of 3C-5C compared to pre-industrial times.’

As Damian Carrington noted in the Guardian, even just 2C is regarded as ‘the level beyond which catastrophic warming is thought to become unstoppable.’ But social scientist Chris Shaw has warned that even the notion of a single ‘safe’ global temperature rise is dangerous. He observes that:

‘falsely ascribing a scientifically derived dangerous limit to climate change diverts attention away from questions about the political and social order that have given rise to the crisis.’

But for the corporate media, such questions are essentially taboo, and the global corporate and financial juggernaut, driven by the demands of capital, shows no sign of slowing down. Scientists calculate that humans pumped around 10.4 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere in 2011, the most recent year analysed. A Nature news article reports:

‘About half of that is taken up each year by carbon “sinks” such as the ocean and vegetation on land; the rest remains in the atmosphere and raises the global concentration of CO₂.’

[pullquote] [The corporate megamachine] needs to be dismantled and replaced with a cooperative human society that is ecologically sustainable. A good start would be to challenge the corporate media that limits the possibility of even discussing alternatives to the madness of global capitalism. [/pullquote]

‘The real question now’, says environmental scientist Gregg Marland from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina , ‘is how will the sinks behave in the future?’ And biogeochemist Jim White at the University of Colorado in Boulder warns:

‘At some point the planet can’t keep doing us a favour.’

In other words, the ability of the planet’s natural carbon ‘sinks’ to soak up humanity’s CO₂ emissions will diminish, and the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ will rise at an increasing rate. What is so dangerous about climate change is not just the high level of CO₂ today, but the speed at which it is increasing. In other words, climate change is accelerating.

Brian Hoskins, a leading climate scientist based at Imperial College, London, says:

‘To me the striking fact is that human activity has already driven the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide to a level more than 40 per cent above the maximum levels it had during the previous million years, and it is going to stay at least this high for thousands of years into the future.’

The very real risk of climate calamity will not be going away for some considerable time.

‘IT IS IRRESPONSIBLE NOT TO MENTION CLIMATE CHANGE’

On 20 May, a devastating tornado hit Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City, and killed at least 24 people, including nine children, injured around 240 people, and destroyed hundreds of homes and shops, two schools and a hospital. It is not yet clear what the impact of global warming might be on tornadoes. A warmer climate may mean there is more moisture in the atmosphere and therefore more thunderstorms and tornadoes, says Richard Betts, head of climate impacts at the UK’s Met Office:

‘But on the other hand, you might get changes in high-level winds which could decrease tornadoes. So it literally could be either way. We don’t know.’ (Pilita Clark, Environment Correspondent, ‘Scientists inconclusive about climate change impact on tornadoes’, Financial Times, May 21, 2013; article behind paywall)

Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, agrees it’s ‘too early to tell’ the impact of global warming on tornadoes, although he added:

‘you’d probably go with a prediction of greater frequency and intensity of tornadoes as a result of human-caused climate change.’

For now, at least, it is not possible to directly attribute a particular tornado, even a large one like the Oklahoma event, to global warming. As Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told the New York Times in 2010:

‘It’s not the right question to ask if this storm or that storm is due to global warming, or is it natural variability. Nowadays, there’s always an element of both.’

Moreover, as science writer Joe Romm notes:

‘When discussing extreme weather and climate, tornadoes should not be conflated with the other extreme weather events for which the connection is considerably more straightforward and better documented, including deluges, droughts, and heat waves.’

However, he also adds:

‘Just because the tornado-warming link is more tenuous doesn’t mean that the subject of global warming should be avoided entirely when talking about tornadoes.’

In 2011, after a record series of tornadoes in the US, Trenberth had told Romm:

‘It is irresponsible not to mention climate change. … The environment in which all of these storms and the tornadoes are occurring has changed from human influences (global warming).’

In the wake of the deaths and devastation wreaked by the Oklahoma tornado, Romm has revisited the scientific evidence on global warming and tornadoes, and again highlights Trenberth’s remark above.

But on the main BBC News television programmes, science correspondent David Shukman brushed the topic away:

‘Tornadoes are nothing new. And so far there’s no evidence that over the past century that climate change is causing more of them.’

There was only the briefest mention of climate change, then, by the BBC, and nothing was heard on the main television news programmes from any of the climate scientists who, as noted above, believe there could be a link with global warming. This is standard treatment. The reluctance or inability of BBC News to discuss fully and responsibly the seriousness of global warming, even when reporting related issues such as energy and industry, is something we noted in an alert earlier this year.

 

‘DENIERS WANT THE PUBLIC TO BE CONFUSED’

But sometimes luck simply runs out for high-profile, highly-paid journalists performing their clunking impressions of ‘balanced’ journalism. This was the fate that befell Sarah Montague of the much-vaunted BBC Radio 4 Today programme when she interviewed James Hansen on May 17. Hansen, the former senior Nasa climate scientist who first warned the world about catastrophic climate change in 1988, corrected the BBC interviewer when she said in her introduction that the global average temperature had not changed in two decades.

‘Well, I should correct what you just said. It’s not true that the temperature has not changed in two decades.’

The BBC interviewer blundered on:

‘But there was a suggestion that we should have been expecting 0.2 of a degree and it has …’

Hansen interjected:

‘No. If you look over a 30 or 40-year period then the expected warming is about two-tenths of a degree per decade. But that doesn’t mean that each decade is going to warm two-tenths of a degree. There’s too much natural variability.’

Hansen continued:

‘In addition, China and India have been pumping out aerosols by burning more and more coal. So you get from that, not only CO₂, but also these particles that reflect sunlight and reduce the heating of the Earth. So […] it’s a complicated system, but there’s no change at all in our understanding of climate sensitivity [to rising levels of CO₂] and where the climate is headed.’

He was clear that the suggestion that global warming has stalled is ‘a diversionary tactic’ by deniers of the science. Why are they doing this?

‘It’s because the deniers want the public to be confused. They raise these minor issues and then we forget about what the main story is. The main story is carbon dioxide is going up and it is going to produce a climate which is going to have dramatic changes if we don’t begin to reduce our emissions.’

The interview was an all-too-rare instance of a BBC journalist being confronted by someone who really knew what they were talking about on a vital issue for humanity, and able to put it across in a calm and articulate way that listeners could easily understand. It’s not the first time the BBC Today programme has been caught out of its depth on climate science.

The false ‘balance’ in climate journalism is heavily skewed by the supposed need to share time between climate science and climate science denial. This is irrational ‘journalism’ by media professionals who have been seduced by a stubborn minority of people who ‘refuse to accept that climate change is happening despite the overwhelming scientific evidence’, notes Ryan Koronowski. This minority, particularly in the United States, are fanatic about fanning the flames of doubt and are often in powerful positions in the political establishment. These climate science deniers are often also free-market ideologues. Koronowski, deputy editor of Climate Progress, cites a recent study by researchers in Australia which found that:

‘people who expressed faith in free-market ideology were also likely to reject [the] scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that burning fossil fuels helps to cause it.’

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the study also showed that irrational scepticism towards scientific evidence extended beyond climate change:

‘Endorsement of free markets also predicted the rejection of other established scientific findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer.’

Indeed, there is a long and shameful history of corporate disinformation and rearguard campaigns of deception to deny science. (See, for example, Andrew Rowell, Green Backlash, Routledge, London, 1996; and Sharon Beder, Global Spin, Green Books, Totnes, 1997.)

For many years now, there has been an overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. A new survey of more than 4,000 peer-reviewed papers showed that 97.1% agreed that humans are causing climate change. Suzanne Goldenberg reported on the Guardian website that:

‘[The] finding of near unanimity provided a powerful rebuttal to climate contrarians who insist the science of climate change remains unsettled.’

Moreover:

‘The study blamed strenuous lobbying efforts by industry to undermine the science behind climate change for the gap in perception. The resulting confusion has blocked efforts to act on climate change.’

This corporate-led blocking strategy is particularly cruel, indeed criminal on a global scale, given the catastrophic consequences of continued carbon emissions.

 

THE PAN-TENTACLED, WALL-EYED AND PARROT-BEAKED GLOBAL KRAKEN

Political, military, industry and financial elites who take science seriously are well aware of the pressing reality of climate change, and worry about what it means for their global grip on power. Nafeez Ahmed observes that the US military is becoming ‘increasingly concerned about the international and domestic security implications of climate change.’ A US Department of Defense (DoD) document, published in February this year, warns that climate change will have ‘significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to greater competition for more limited and critical life-sustaining resources like food and water.’ Climate change impacts will likely also act ‘as accelerants of instability or conflict in parts of the world’ and ‘DoD will need to adjust to the impacts of climate change on its facilities, infrastructure, training and testing activities, and military capabilities.’

The US military’s stance on climate change is, of course, not motivated out of a heartfelt wish to be a benefactor for humanity. As Ahmed points out:

‘The primary goal of adaptation is to ensure that the US armed forces are “better prepared to effectively respond to climate change” as it happens, and “to ensure continued mission success” in military operations – rather than to prevent or mitigate climate change.’

The elite response to impending climate chaos extends to capitalism’s endless drive to burn ever more dangerous quantities of fossil fuel, even to the extent of moving into the Arctic as the ice melts. Ahmed notes that the region likely holds a massive 25 per cent of the world’s remaining undiscovered oil and gas reserves. Fossil fuel companies from the US, Russia, Canada, Norway and Denmark already have their eyes on this northern prize, ‘sparking concerted efforts by these countries to expand their Arctic military presence.’

Methane hydrates lying beneath the Arctic permafrost and the seafloor are tantalisingly now within reach. An attempt by the Tokyo-based state oil company Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation to extract methane from far below the ocean ‘shows promise’: an odd way to describe a reckless operation that will further tip the balance in favour of climate instability. A Nature news story, ‘Japanese test coaxes fire from ice’, blithely told readers:

‘Reservoirs of methane hydrates — icy deposits in which methane molecules are trapped in a lattice of water — are thought to hold more energy than all other fossil fuels combined. The problem is extracting the methane economically from the deposits, which lie beneath Arctic permafrost and seafloor sediments. But some scientists and policy makers in energy-poor, coast-rich Japan hope that the reservoirs will become a crucial part of the country’s energy profile.’

Methane is an even more potent global-warming gas than carbon dioxide. That a country’s ‘energy profile’ may be pumped up by exploiting methane, even as the planet burns, is surely a form of societal madness. It’s sad that the madness extends even to the most prestigious of scientific journals. A corporate-friendlyNature editorial this month exhorted, ‘Together we stand’. Those are nice-sounding words. But they are an unfortunate echo of the well-known farcical refrain from the UK’s discredited ‘coalition’ government: ‘We’re all in this together’. The propaganda phrase conveys a convenient myth of a shared society with shared aims: a real democracy, in other words.

The Nature editorial springs from a similarly deluded mindset:

‘Protecting the environment is an added cost that many politicians and business leaders would prefer to avoid. Not to bother makes things cheaper. And despite the rhetoric of environmental campaigners, that remains an uncomfortable truth, at least in terms of the climate problem. Carbon emissions are a hallmark of energy use — and it is cheap and available energy that has made the modern world.’

And perhaps destroyed it too. The blinkered editorial continues:

‘The economic currency of gross domestic product, for so long used as a benchmark of a country’s performance, could be tweaked to include social indicators and how well a country respects environmental criteria, such as the concept of planetary boundaries that should not be exceeded.’

The feeble call to ‘tweak’ social indicators, albeit to include ‘the concept of planetary boundaries that should not be exceeded’, is paltry indeed when Nature‘s editors cannot even acknowledge that powerful and destructive state-corporate forces are defending their ‘right’ to exploit the planet’s resources and keep billions in poverty and servitude. The editors of Nature give little sign that they comprehend the inherent unsustainability of global capitalism, and they seem oblivious to the scale of corporate obstructionism and decades-long disinformation campaigns to thwart substantive action on climate. (Again, for example, see the books by Rowell and Beder, as well as our own books.)

If the world’s leading scientific publication has failed us, perhaps we could turn instead to writers such as Edward Abbey. In his classic novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, Abbey powerfully and poetically rails against the corporate ravaging of the environment. In one vivid scene, the four titular protaganists overlook the devastation wreaked by a huge strip mine in Arizona:

‘Their view from the knoll would be difficult to describe in any known terrestrial language. Bonnie thought of something like a Martian invasion, the War of the Worlds. Captain Smith was reminded of Kennecott’s open-pit mine (“world’s largest”) near Magna, Utah. Dr. Sarvis thought of the plain of fire and of the oligarchs and oligopoly beyond: Peabody Coal only one arm of Anaconda Copper; Anaconda only a limb of United States Steel; U.S. Steel intertwined in incestuous embrace with the Pentagon, TVA, Standard Oil, General Dynamics, Dutch Shell, I.G. Farben-industrie; the whole conglomerated cartel spread out upon half the planet Earth like a global kraken, pan-tentacled, wall-eyed and parrot-beaked, its brain a bank of computer data centers, its blood the flow of money, its heart a radioactive dynamo, its language the technotronic monologue of number imprinted on magnetic tape.’ (Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang, Avon Books, 1975/76, New York, p. 159)

Abbey memorably sums up the whole corporate-industrial-military system as ‘a megalomaniacal megamachine.’ The strong, image-laden language gives a hint of what humanity is up against. It is not a matter of ‘tweaking’ the system, or asking the megamachine to be nicer. It needs to be dismantled and replaced with a cooperative human society that is ecologically sustainable. A good start would be to challenge the corporate media that limits the possibility of even discussing alternatives to the madness of global capitalism.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Cromwell: Editor    editor@medialens.org

Born in Glasgow in 1962; studied natural philosophy and astronomy, then a PhD in solar physics; spell with Shell in the Netherlands, then a research position in oceanography in Southampton; left in 2010 to work full-time on Media Lens; author of Why Are We The Good Guys? (Zero Books, 2012); co-author, with David Edwards, of two Media Lens books: Guardians of Power (Pluto Books, 2006) and Newspeak In the 21st Century (Pluto Books, 2009); author of Private Planet (Jon Carpenter Publishing, 2001); co-editor, with Mark Levene, of Surviving Climate Change (Pluto Books, 2007).

By Michael Parenti
From our archives: Articles you should have read the first time around but didn’t.

(posted in 2012) 

[Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under the Clinton administration, has been increasingly critical of the Democratic Party’s pro-corporate policies over the past several years. In a May 24, 2013 blog (re-printed below), Reich went further than he has before in condemning Wall Street’s control of the Democratic Party, noting, ” Democrats can’t be trusted to control Wall Street. If there were ever an issue ripe for a third party, the Street would be it.”

The Emergency Labor Network (ELN) agrees with Reich’s characterization of the Democrats. However, we believe that it is necessary to spell out what kind of third party is needed. After all, there are third parties and then there are third parties. The question in each case is what section of society makes that party up and what kind of platform does it have.

We in the ELN are committed to building a third party rooted in the working class — a Labor Party — with a program that faithfully reflects the interests of the working class and the overwhelming majority, and functions democratically with the elected leadership accountable to the membership.]

******************************************************************

Here is the Reich blog:

Who needs Republicans when Wall Street has the Democrats? With the help of congressional Democrats, the Street is rolling back financial reforms enacted after its near meltdown.

According to the New York Times, a bill that’s already moved through the House Financial Services Committee, allowing more of the very kind of derivatives trading (bets on bets) that got the Street into trouble, was drafted by Citigroup – whose recommended language was copied nearly word for word in 70 lines of the 85-line bill.

Where were House Democrats? Right behind it. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, Democrat of New York, a major recipient of the Street’s political largesse, co-sponsored it. Most of the Democrats on the Committee, also receiving generous donations from the big banks, voted for it. Rep. Jim Himes, another proponent of the bill and a former banker at Goldman Sachs, now leads the Democrat’s fund-raising effort in the House.

Bob Rubin – co-chair of Goldman before he joined the Clinton White House, and chair of Citigroup’s management committee after he left it – is still influential in the Party, and his protégés are all over the Obama administration. I like Bob personally but I battled his Street-centric views the whole time I served, and soon after I left the administration he persuaded Clinton to support a repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.

Jack Lew, Obama’s current Treasury Secretary, was chief operating officer of Citigroup’s Alternative Investments unit, a proprietary trading group, from 2006 to 2008, before he joined the Obama administration. Peter Orszag, Obama’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, left the Obama Administration to become Citigroup’s vice chairman of corporate and investment banking, and chairman of the financial strategy and solutions group.

All these men are honorable. None has broken any law. But they and their ilk in congress – the Democrats who are now rolling back Dodd-Frank – don’t seem to appreciate the extent to which Wall Street has harmed, and continues to harm, America.

It’s not entirely coincidental that the Obama Administration never put tough conditions on banks receiving bailout money, never prosecuted a single top Wall Street executive for the excesses that led to the near meltdown, and still refuses to support a tiny tax on financial transactions that would bring in tens of billions of dollars as well as discourage program trading.

Democrats can’t be trusted to control Wall Street. If there were ever an issue ripe for a third party, the Street would be it.

Issued by the Emergency Labor Network (ELN)

For more information write emergencylabor@aol.com or P.O. Box 21004, Cleveland, OH 44121 or call 216-736-4715 or visit our website atwww.laborfightback.org.

by Stephen Lendman

Infowars headlined “British Special Forces Enter Syria to Aid Rebels,” saying:

They’re “directing rebel fighters in a repeat of how Libyan rebels were aided” to oust Gaddafi. Qatari special forces are also involved. Very likely others are.

“Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists who fought US troops in Iraq and helped NATO powers overthrow (Gaddafi) were airlifted into Syria (to) topple (Assad) in November last year.”

More come in regularly. They supplement existing ranks or replace elements Syria’s military eliminated. No end of conflict looms.

Appalling atrocities are committed. Assad’s wrongfully blamed for foreign death squad crimes. He’s falsely accused of using chemical weapons. On May 28, Reuters headlined “Syria fighting rages, more chemical attacks reported,” saying:

“(F)urther reports surfaced of chemical weapons attacks by (Assad’s) forces on rebel areas.” These allegations and previous ones are spurious. On May 24, Voice of Russia headlined “Russian journalists have proof Syrian insurgents used chemical weapons,” saying:

They have video proof. They gave it to the UN Secretariat. They show “chemical weapons attacks allegedly committed by opposition fighters in the vicinity of Aleppo on March 19.”

“This was confirmed by the spokesman for the Deputy Secretary General Farhan Haq.”

RTR journalist Anastasia Popova confirmed toxic substances use. Eyewitness accounts supplemented video evidence. Nonetheless, spurious anti-Assad accusations persist.  On May 27, the UN News Centre headlined “UN rights chief urges end to ‘intolerable’ suffering in Syria.”

Navi Pillay addressed the 23rd Human Rights Council session. She stopped short of pointing fingers the right way. She consistently blames Assad for Western-backed death squad crimes.

“A humanitarian, political and social disaster is already upon us,” she said, “and what looms is truly a nightmare…Civilians bear the brunt of this crisis in which human rights violations have reached horrific dimensions.  Confronted with the flagrant disregard of international law and human life on every side, I feel utter dismay. I am extremely concerned at current reports suggesting that hundreds of civilians have been killed or injured, and thousands may remain trapped, by indiscriminate shelling and aerial attacks by Government forces in Al Qusayr.”

She admitted that anti-government forces also commit human rights violations. She consistently blames Assad most of all. She avoids explaining Washington’s war on Syria. She’s a reliable imperial tool. She’s been so in previous capacities. She suppresses truth. The responsible major powers are absolved.

Victims are blamed for their crimes. She did it before. She’s doing it now. She aids and abets lawless aggression. She facilitates human rights abuses in the process.  On May 27, the Human Rights Council (HRC) convened its 23rd session. President Remigiusz Henczel addressed a days earlier request to debate deteriorating conditions in Syria.

Qatar claimed Syrian forces were massacring their people. A May 16 Financial Times report headlined “Qatar bankrolls Syrian revolt with cash and arms.”

“(I)t “spent as much as $3bn over the past two years supporting the rebellion in Syria, far exceeding any other government, but is now being nudged aside by Saudi Arabia as the prime source of arms to rebels.”

Washington orchestrates everything. Turkey’s its main attack dog. CIA elements operate in its territory near Syria. They facilitate cross-border weapons shipments.  Syria’s representative addressed the HRC session. He objected to debate on his country. Turkey and Qatar requested it.

He said they’re directly responsible for what’s going on. They’re encouraging terrorist attacks on Syrian soil. They’re arming and training insurgent elements.  UK Foreign Secretary William Hague called ending the so-called arms embargo the right decision. He led efforts to do so. He suggested Britain would go it alone otherwise.

He claimed ending the embargo “is part of supporting the diplomatic work to bring about the political solution.” It’s “necessary and right,” he said. Doing so will “protect civilians,” he added. Tory MP John Baron disagreed, saying:

“It beggars belief, the idea that pouring more arms into this conflict could not or would not escalate the violence. Of course, its not going to do that. But it could do something more dangerous. That is it could escalate the conflict beyond Syria’s borders. That is why it could be a mistake of historic proportions.”

Oxfam’s Anna Macdonald said supplying more weapons “add(s) fuel to the fire. We are concerned that supplying arms to the opposition won’t level the playing field. In fact, it will fuel a deadly arms race that will have even worse consequences for civilians.”

“The millions of people suffering in Syria right now don’t need more arms. They need aid.”

Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander asked “how does supplying weapons help to secure a lasting peace?”

Supplying them in greater numbers assures more death and destruction. Doing so complies with Washington’s longstanding agenda.  The road to Tehran runs through Damascus. Replacing independent governments with pro-Western ones is prioritized.  Twenty-one EU nations are NATO members. It’s an alliance for war, not peace. It’s for offense, not defense. It’s a killing machine. America runs it.

Britain, France, Germany and other EU nations partner in its imperial wars. Doing so ravages one country after another.  Last October, Nobel Committee members awarded EU nations their Peace Prize. They claimed doing so reflected their decades long contribution “to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.”

They ignored their role in Eurasian conflicts and beyond. They turned a blind eye to NATO’s global ambitions. It’s part of Washington’s full spectrum dominance agenda.  It’s potentially catastrophic if not stopped. It assures greater wars on humanity. Global war is possible. Washington controls NATO policy. Its so-called Partnership for Peace is a thinly veiled pro-war agenda.

War is peace reflects longstanding US policy. Syria’s conflict potentially could spin out of control. The entire region and beyond could become embroiled.  During last year’s pre-election campaign, Republicans stressed “American exceptionalism.” Democrats countered saying:

“We also understand the indispensable role that the United States must continue to play in promoting international peace and prosperity.”

In 1996, Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal coined the term “indispensable nation.” Clinton used it as justification for NATO’s Bosnia intervention. In several speeches, Obama stressed American exceptionalism and the term indispensable nation. Most others disagree. They do so for good reason.  America prioritizes war, not peace. Permanent war is longstanding policy. One country after another is ravaged. Millions perish. Millions more remain vulnerable.

Where this ends who knows. Humanity may not survive the onslaught.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.  http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

By Joseph Kishore, wsws.org

The speech delivered by President Barack Obama at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. last week has revealed not only a crisis within the Obama administration and increasingly bitter conflicts within the highest echelons of the state, but also, and most profoundly, a historic crisis of class rule.

Obama’s speech is of exceptional political significance. More than a half-century after Eisenhower warned that American democracy was threatened by the emergence, in the aftermath of World War II, of a “military-industrial complex,” Obama all but acknowledged that American democracy is approaching a point of breakdown.

A decade after the beginning of the “war on terror,” Obama warned, “America stands at a crossroads.” He continued, “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us. We have to be mindful of James Madison’s warning that no nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

In other words, the danger to American democracy comes not from “terrorists”—the catch-all pretext for every action taken by the American ruling class since September 11, including by the present administration—but from within the state itself.

Obama’s speech clearly emerged out of bitter conflicts within the state apparatus. He seemed engaged in a debate, without naming the parties with whom he was arguing. At times he would pause, as if he was waiting for a response. He took an almost passive attitude to the actions of his own administration, as if these were somehow external, somehow directed by forces outside of his own control.

This was not the speech of a confident chief executive, but the representative of an administration under siege, torn by internal contradictions, in which his control over the government seems entirely questionable.

The president repeatedly referred to illegal actions taken. The American government had, he acknowledged, “compromised our basic values—by using torture to interrogate our enemies, and detaining individuals in a way that ran counter to the rule of law.”

By designating them as “counter to the rule of law,” Obama was effectively admitting that actions taken by the United States government—that have continued under his own administration—were illegal, criminal, unconstitutional.

Obama sought to defend these actions, while openly betraying his own nervousness that he was directly implicated in violations of the Constitution, for which he could be held liable.

Obama repeatedly reminded his audience that there were others involved in making these decisions. “Not only did Congress authorize the use of force, it is briefed on every strike that America takes, every strike,” he insisted. “That includes the one instance where we targeted an American citizen.”

Hidden from the American people, preparations are far advanced for an open break with democratic forms of rule in the United States. Under the framework of the “war on terror,” the American ruling class has brought democracy to the very brink of extinction. Under first Bush and then Obama, the executive has claimed vast powers to wage war, spy on the American people, torture and hold prisoners indefinitely without charge, try them in military commissions, and kill anyone, anywhere, including US citizens, without due process.

Little more than a month ago, following the still unexplained bombings at the Boston Marathon, the entire city was placed in lockdown and virtual martial law. As the WSWS noted at the time, “The events in Boston have laid bare the modus operandi for the establishment of dictatorial forms of rule in the US.” Once again, as with the attacks of September 11 that set off the “war on terror,” the bombers were being closely monitored by sections of the state apparatus, and the events were seized on to implement new and unprecedented attacks on democratic rights.

The breakdown of democracy is tied to an immense growth in the strength of the military and intelligence apparatus. These institutions operate as virtual laws unto themselves.

Confirming that issues of civilian-military relations are being intensively discussed within the ruling class, an article appeared in the New York Timeson Monday, penned by retired Army lieutenant general Karl Eikenberry, the former head of Armed Forces in Afghanistan, and historian David Kennedy. Under the headline, “Americans and Their Military, Drifting Apart,” the two authors worry that the expansion of the military is taking place under conditions of “a minimum citizen engagement and comprehension.”

To address this situation, they call for the institution of the draft in some form, before concluding, “While the armed forces retool for the future, citizens cannot be mere spectators. As Adams said about military power, ‘A wise and prudent people will always have a watchful and jealous eye over it.’”

The advanced state of the breakdown of bourgeois democracy, under conditions of perpetual war, has generated intense conflicts among different factions of the ruling class. Within and between various branches of the military, the CIA and FBI, there are continuous factional wars, in which the conflicts within the ruling class are worked out behind the backs of the American people.

While there are sections of the ruling class that would back an open military dictatorship, the break with legality and bourgeois democracy is also fraught with immense dangers. The legitimacy of the American political system is defined by the Constitution.

The American ruling class is destroying the political foundations upon which it has based its rule. They cannot invoke legality when they are confronting challenges to the state from the working class when they are the greatest law-breakers. The more they dispense with constitutional legality, the more illegitimate the ruling elite appears before the great mass of the population, within the United States and internationally.

Yet, despite these concerns, neither Obama nor any sections of the ruling class has anything else to offer. This explains the strange, contradictory character of Obama’s speech.

While voicing concern over the state of American democracy, one of the central aims of Obama’s remarks was to defend the most egregious violation of democratic principles thus far taken—namely, the assassination of US citizens without due process. These operations would continue, he said, with at most a pseudo-legal fig leaf, one or another form of Star Chamber proceedings to rubber stamp the decision of the executive.

As for militarism, while urging an end to a “boundless war on terror,” Obama outlined a series of military operations all over the world. He called for stepping up the arming of the Syrian “rebels,” many of which are tied to Al Qaeda, as part of the campaign to unseat President Bashar Al Assad. At the same time, sections of the American ruling class are trying to extract some of their forces from the Middle East in order to shift towards Asia and a more direct confrontation with China.

In the end, whatever Obama’s public displays of self-doubt, he has neither the will nor the ability to change anything. Efforts by the apologists of the Democratic Party, including the New York Times and the Nation magazine, to present Obama’s speech as a transformative event combine complacency, deceit and naiveté. As if to confirm this fact, Obama stressed on Memorial Day yesterday that the nation was “still at war.”

Moreover, if the most powerful sections of the bourgeoisie and the military/intelligence apparatus ever seriously considered for a moment that Obama was abandoning the program of global hegemony, his administration would come to a brutal and rapid end.

A crisis of bourgeois rule is one of the most important indicators of impending revolutionary upheaval. History substantiates a general political rule that revolutions arise not only because the oppressed classes cannot live in the old way, but that the ruling classes cannot rule in the old way.

The crisis of class rule and the collapse of American democracy are rooted in, on the one hand, endless war abroad, and, on the other, the uncontrollable and historically unprecedented degree of social inequality.

These developments pose grave dangers for the working class. Not only is it possible for a dictatorship to emerge in the United States, it is already emerging.

The defense of democratic rights is more than ever a class issue. Democracy on the basis of capitalism and imperialist militarism is impossible. To defend its interests, the working class cannot rely on any section of the bourgeois state apparatus or its auxiliary organizations.

The independent political mobilization of the working class, based on a socialist program, is a matter of the highest urgency. This means above all the building of the Socialist Equality Party.

Joseph Kishore is a senior political analyst with wsws.org, informational resource of the Social Equality Party.