DIANA JOHNSTONE—Historically, Westernizers in Russia have repeatedly gained influence and then lost out, because their overtures to the West were rebuffed on one pretext or another. (The British geopolitical tradition, based on the timeless dictum divide et impera, has traditionally favored policies to keep the continent divided) This merges easily with the Brzezinski doctrine of maintaining separation between Western Europe as a whole and Russia to maintain U.S. global hegemony. Western rejection of Russia naturally favors a rise of the Slavophiles. It also obliges Russia to look to Eurasia rather than Western Europe. This is happening again.
READ ONCategory: CAPITALIST FRONTS
The Simulation of Democracy
CJ HOPKINS—The problem is that capitalism is never going to lead to actual democracy (i.e., government by and for the people). This is never going to happen. In fact, capitalism has already reached the limits of the freedom it can safely offer us. This freedom grants us the ability to make an ever-expanding variety of choices … none of which have much to do with democracy
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The 75 Years’ War Against the Soviet Union
STEVEN JONAS—”The Hungarian Uprising of 1956 is always presented in the West as failed revolt by democratic forces against the communist government of Hungary. From the perspective of the Hungarian Communist side, however, the picture was rather different (The Truth About Hungary: Facts and Eyewitness Accounts, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1957). From that perspective, it was a neo-fascist revolt by the forces that had ruled Hungary from 1919 to 1945 (first under the world’s first fascist dictator, Admiral Miklos Horthy, at the end under the even-more vicious Arrow Cross, who were hanging known communists from street lamps in downtown Budapest). That had to be put down, even it meant calling in Soviet tanks…”
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The death of reformism: Corbyn and the “broad left”
CHRIS MARSDEN—The Blairite think-tank, Prospect, proclaims, “Social democracy, the most influential force in European politics for decades, is dying.” They should know, because the party they dubbed “New Labour” was in the vanguard of the political shift to a nakedly pro-business, pro-privatisation, pro-austerity and pro-war agenda that has ended in electoral meltdown. The working class, particularly the younger generation, has abandoned the old parties in disgust at what they have done.
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Deafening Democratic Silence on Gaza Is Because They Own It Too
BRUCE DIXON—No fewer than 24 states have enacted bipartisan legislation to publicly identify and blacklist individuals or corporations that do business with individuals and entities publicly identified as BDS-friendly. (South Carolina already regards any criticism of Israel as a hate crime.—Ed). Similar legislation has been introduced in a dozen more states and in the US Senate. Israel trains thousands of US police each year for hundreds of local departments from big cities, universities and state cop shops to small towns and rural counties.
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Taxpayer-Funded Mercenaries Serving Both U.S. & Foreign Aristocracies
ERIC ZUESSE—The U.S. military is by far the most-respected of all institutions in America. But the U.S. military of today is actually not only the most corrupt but also the worst of America’s institutions. It’s the worst because it serves the worst and is run by the worst. It’s basically a mercenary operation for U.S.-and-allied aristocracies, and it routinely destroys the lives of millions of people in many countries, but since there is no accountability, it keeps getting even worse
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Today’s Poor People’s Campaign: Too Important Not to Criticize
PATRICK WALKER—Now, anyone reading Dixon’s piece will instantly notice its snarky tone toward religion. As a frequent reader of Black Agenda Report (a black leftist publication, after all), I find this par for the course and hardly unjustified; how often, after all, has religion—especially U.S. Christianity—been used to buttress the powers that be? Or, in other words, to provide respectable support—even God’s sanction—for a ruthless capitalist or militarist establishment or even Nazis?
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