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August, 2013

(ARTICULO) Yasuní: Entre el eco-fundamentalismo y el Socialismo del Buen Vivir

nuestroamericano.org

Publicado en 21 agosto, 2013

Carlos Vera

En los últimos seis años se ha venido impulsando la iniciativa revolucionaria para mantener el crudo en el subsuelo del Parque Nacional Yasuní, reserva mundial de biosfera. Este proyecto tenía como objetivo que los países industrializados, que son los más contaminantes del planeta [1], asuman su responsabilidad para con el calentamiento global y finalmente realicen un aporte concreto y tangible para evitar la explotación de 846 millones de barriles de petróleo del campo Yasuní ITT [2]. La intención detrás de esta iniciativa era recaudar alrededor de $3.5 billones de dólares, suma que constituye un valor ínfimo en relación al potencial económico que significaría la explotación de este campo. Dicha suma sería destinada a programas que fomenten la reducción de la pobreza, la educación y el desarrollo social, así como el de fuentes renovables de energía, mantener los ecosistemas y las áreas Protegidas, reforestar áreas degradadas, generación de empleo sustentable y mejorar la eficiencia energética, por ende, cambiar la matriz productiva del Ecuador. Lamentablemente, solo se logró recaudar el 0,37% de este monto total, es decir, alrededor de $376 millones de dólares [3]. De este modo, el Presidente Rafael Correa anunció la derogación de la iniciativa Yasuní ITT, así como el inicio de la explotación petrolera en la zona.

On the Eve of an Illegal Attack on Syria, Avaaz/350.org Board Members Beat the Drums of War

“Here’s the awful truth: even if every person, every automobile, and every factory suddenly emitted zero emissions, the earth would still be headed, head first and at full speed, toward total disaster for one major reason. The military produces enough greenhouse gases, by itself, to place the entire globe, with all its inhabitants large and small, in the most imminent danger of extinction.” — Barry Sanders, The Green Zone

Today’s commentary by Cory Morningstar, WKOG Collective

August 30, 2012

AVAAZ3

Appalling.

350.org’s Van Jones (U.S. Advisory Council Board member and NRDC trustee), is calling for airstrikes on Syria. [CNN Video below.]

From the 350.org website:

“Van Jones is a globally recognized, award-winning pioneer in human rights and the clean-energy economy. He is a co-founder of three successful non-profit organizations: The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color of Change and Green For All. Jones is the best-selling author of the definitive book on green jobs, The Green-Collar Economy. He served as the green jobs advisor in the Obama White House in 2009. Jones is currently the President of Rebuild the Dream.” [Emphasis added.]

Never has the legacy of Ella Baker been so disgraced. Ella, today, spinning in her grave, once conveyed to the world:

“Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.”

Ella would surely spit on Van Jones if she were alive today.

350.org’s Ricken Patel (350.org International Advisory Council member – and Avaaz founder) is also pounding the drums of  war. Just 4 days ago, on August 22, 2013, Patel himself urged Avaaz supporters to demand world leaders “place a no-fly zone over Syria.” Those who comprise Avaaz are already up to their necks – in the blood of the Libyan people who they helped annihilate. [Further reading: Did Libya’s Citizens Demand Foreign Intervention? A ridiculous question, yet according to Avaaz, the answer is yes.]

The following link is Google’s cache of the Avaaz/Patel campaign to demand a no fly zone (https://secure.avaaz.org/en/syria_no_fly_zone/). It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on 22 Aug 2013 18:08:13 GMT: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vzBe8PMa7H8J:https://secure.avaaz.org/en/syria_no_fly_zone/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=firefox-a

Screenshots of Patel’s email:

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Of course, organizations such as Avaaz and 350.org/1Sky, are created and financed by the very fraudsters that the World Bank whistleblower, Karen Hudes, warns us about. [WORLD BANK WHISTLEBLOWER ON SYRIA [THE IRAN, IRAQ, SYRIA PIPELINE PROJECT]

The notorious war criminal, George Bush, first used the term “axis of evil” in his State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002. He repeated the term throughout his presidency, to describe the governments that he accused of helping “terrorism” and seeking “weapons of mass destruction”. Media perpetually echoed the message until it sunk into the American psyche. Iran, Iraq and North Korea were the key “Axis of Evil” countries targeted for demonization.

Perhaps forgotten is that the “Beyond the Axis of Evil” countries included Cuba, Libya, & Syria.

The demonization of the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, (distinguished guest of U.S. Colombia University, 2006) was never so skillfully orchestrated.

The public lapped it up.

Over a million dead and counting.

Today, “The Axis of Evil” psyops (still drilled into the Euro-American psyche) has been coupled, if not superseded, with the manufacturing of fear. Add to this orchestrated fear, the “Humanitarian Intervention” and “Responsibility to Protect” doctrines. The crème de le crème of imperial rhetoric. Such doctrines, created by American “think-tanks”, for the elite, by the elite, are of critical use for a declining and morally bankrupt empire. An empire that brilliantly attempts to convince and portray, utilizing the language within these doctrines, that the atrocities they manufacture, call for, and carry out, are somehow honourable and admirable – as opposed to what they actually are: crimes against humanity. Orwell would have called this psychopathic persistence a stunning feat in doublespeak.

Many so-called civil society organizations/NGOs have been instrumental in making these doctrines palatable to the public.

The empire really needs you to believe.

Don’t.

Above: The video that Avaaz et al did not want you to see. “That a million Libyans came out and filled Green Square, under the threat of NATO bombing, to show their support for Muammar al-Gaddafi was easily overlooked. A seduced person, a person who is loving the thrill of being seduced, no longer has any use for truth or facts.” [The “Arab Spring” and the Seduction of the Western Left]

 

[Cory Morningstar is an independent investigative journalist, writer and environmental activist, focusing on global ecological collapse and political analysis of the non-profit industrial complex. She resides in Canada. Her recent writings can be found on Wrong Kind of Green, The Art of Annihilation, Political Context, Counterpunch, Canadians for Action on Climate Change and Countercurrents. Her writing has also been published by Bolivia Rising and Cambio, the official newspaper of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.]

 

Further Reading on 350.org:

Rockefellers’ 1Sky Unveils the New 350.org | More $ – More Delusion

Why I Refuse to Promote Bill McKibben

The Climate Cartel: 1Sky, 350.org and Rockefeller Brothers | Stronger as One

Tar Sands Action & the Paralysis of a Movement | Part I

Obedience – A New Requirement for the “Revolution”

Unravelling the Deception of a False Movement

When Will Environmentalists Ever Wake Up? The Great Pipeline Scam

Keystone XL | The Ivory Towers Crushing the Last Remnants of Climate Justice

SumOfUs are Corporate Whores | Some Of Us Are Not

The Most Important COP Briefing That No One Ever Heard | Truth, Lies, Racism & Omnicide

Designer Protests and Vanity Arrests in DC

Keystone XL: The Art of NGO Discourse | Part I

Keystone XL: The Art of NGO Discourse – Part II

Working for Warren: Corporate Greens

Further Reading on Avaaz:

The Grotesque and Disturbing Ideology at the Helm of Avaaz

SPEAKING TRUTH: A Profound Message to Avaaz from Poet Gabriel Impaglione of Argentina

Argentine Journalist Stella Calloni Denounces Avaaz | Latin American Unions Follow Her Lead

Avaaz: Empire Propaganda Mill Masquerading as Grassroots Activism

Rio Summit “Good Versus Evil” Advert Displays Blatant Racism and Imperialism at Core of Avaaz

Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part I, Section I

Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part I, Section II

Through the Looking Glass

Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part I, Section III

Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section I

Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section II

Stella Calloni: Disinformation Against Syria is Criminal

Big, Glitzy Marches Are Not Movements

In 1963 and today, the real work happens elsewhere.

Boston Review

August 28, 2013
Robin D. G. Kelley

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vpickering/

 

Anyone paying attention to the events leading up to the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington should know by now that this historic gathering rallied under the banner of “jobs and freedom.” It has become common knowledge that economic justice was at the heart of the march’s agenda, and the main forces behind the event had roots in socialist movements—Bayard Rustin and veteran black labor leader A. Philip Randolph, who threatened a similar march two decades earlier after a black woman activist proposed the idea at a Civil Rights conference in 1940.  Thanks to the penetrating scholarship of William P. Jones’s March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights, Gary Younge’s The Speech: The Story Behind Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, Dream, and Michael Honey’s eye-opening collection of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, forgotten speeches on labor, All Labor Has Dignity, among many other books and films, we have finally begun to crack a half century of myth portraying the march as a moment of Civil Rights triumph culminating in Dr. King’s optimistic and iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.  While King’s speech remains the focus of every commemoration, A. Philip Randolph’s opening remarks are now getting some attention.  Echoing Karl Marx’s oft-quoted line in Capital, that “Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded,” he presciently warned,

This civil rights revolution is not confined to the Negro, nor is it confined to civil rights for our white allies know that they cannot be free while we are not. . . . [W]e have no future in a society in which six million black and white people are unemployed and millions more live in poverty.  Nor is the goal of our civil rights revolution merely the passage of civil rights legislation. Yes, we want all public accommodations open to all citizens, but those accommodations will mean little to those who cannot afford to use them. Yes, we want a Fair Employment Practice Act, but what good will it do if profit-geared automation destroys the jobs of millions of workers black and white?

Organizers of March on Washington Commemoration Defend a Criminal Administration

MarchonWashington

Dorothy Meekins holds up the national flag with the picture of President Barack Obama as she attends the rally, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2013. Organizers have planned for about 100,000 people to participate in the event, which is the precursor to the actual anniversary of the Aug. 28, 1963, march. It will be led by the Rev. Al Sharpton and King’s son Martin Luther King III. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

World Socialist Website

26 August 2013

 By Sandy English

On Saturday, tens of thousands of workers and young people marched to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963.

The presence of working people expressed the powerful hold on popular consciousness of the ideals of democracy and equality that animated the mass movement for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s and are associated with the event that culminated in King’s famous “I have a dream” speech.

However, the politics that dominated Saturday’s march, promoted by the organizers and the collection of Democratic politicians, official “civil rights” leaders and union bureaucrats who spoke from the podium, were the antithesis of those ideals. The organizers sought to exploit the anniversary by staging an event backed by the White House whose aim was to channel growing political and social opposition behind a government that is carrying out an unprecedented assault on democratic rights and a further growth of social inequality.

The event took place under the shadow of a new campaign of lies by the Obama administration to justify the launching of a war against Syria—something that no speaker so much as mentioned, doing a further disservice to the memory of King, who opposed the US war in Vietnam.

FLASHBACK | The Last Twenty Years of Social Liquidation

libcom.org

August 27, 2013

by Miguel Amorós

“In the society of the spectacle protest is a form of leisure and the tragic pathos of the class struggle must recede before hilarity, relaxation and festival, genuine forms of the neo-contestatory spirit which has found in pot and pan-banging, whistles, and costume parades its most suitable means of expression and in software, blogs and cell-phones its best weapons.”

The last twenty years of social liquidation - Miguel Amorós

In this 2006 lecture, Miguel Amorós depicts the previous twenty years as a period of radical changes for the emancipatory project, beginning with “the disappearance of the workers milieu” in the 1980s and the simultaneous rise of a new youth movement which, because it “started from zero” as a result of its lack of historical memory, was in part drawn to violence (“immediate confrontation”), and in part to the practice of “neo-contestatory”, “festive” forms of simulated struggle (“In the society of the spectacle protest is a form of leisure”), only to be “absorbed by the dynamic of survival in a hostile environment” as “the fifth wheel of the electoral bandwagon of social democracy”.

Concerning the Degeneration of Revolutionary Ideals after the End of the Working Class in the West

“The present period is one of those when everything that seems normally to constitute a reason for living dwindles away, when one must, on pain of sinking into confusion or apathy, call everything into question again.”1

On July 19, 1936 the Spanish proletariat responded to Franco’s coup d’état by unleashing a social revolution. On February 23, 1981 another coup d’état took place, one that met with the most absolute indifference of the proletarians, who hardly bothered to change the station on their radios or TVs. This contrast of attitudes reflects the fact that the proletariat was in 1936 the principal social factor in politics, while in 1981 it was not even an auxiliary factor for the interests of others. If the coup of 1936 was directed against the proletariat, the coup of 1981 was a settling of accounts between different factions of power. Not even in the most alarmist analyses was the workers’ predilection for struggle taken into consideration for the simple reason that it was minimal. The perpetrators of the coup d’état ignored the proletariat because it was no more than a secondary figure of political rhetoric, one that was historically finished.

The “Arab Spring” and the Seduction of the Western Left

U.S.NATO SLAUGHTER

Zero  Anthropology

26 August 26, 2013

by Donnchadh Mac an Ghoill

Hosni Mubarak has been released from prison, the Egyptian Army is back in charge – this time with the support of most Egyptians, who could no longer endure the chaos their elected Muslim Brotherhood government had inflicted on them. In Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies are in full military retreat – the government of Bashar al-Assad having convincingly won the battle for the hearts and minds of the Syrian people. William Hague and his fellow rogues have been left trashing around for some pretext to “go in” and save their sectarian terrorists. As I write, a suspiciously convenient incident, possibly involving chemical weapons, may do the trick. In Tunisia the Brotherhood regime faces popular revolt, and Libya has descended into utter chaos. Protests in Bahrain continue to be violently crushed by the U.S. puppet dictatorship. In short, the lives of ordinary people are immeasurably worse today than at the opening of the so called “Arab Spring,” in December 2010. All the talk of “revolution” has been exposed as the nonsense it always was.

Nowhere is this more the case than in Libya, where the Working Class has been stripped of all power and protection, and power put back in the hands of the Benghazi comprador class, which had held it during the reign of King Idris. This was no Revolution, but a Restoration – with a counter-revolutionary monarchical flag and the fire-power of Western imperialist armies to make the point clear to even the most wilfully obtuse.

The failure of anti-war movements to stop war is nothing new. There has never been a case of protest movements stopping a war. Even the Vietnam War, which eventually generated massive protests in the U.S., was not halted by these protests, but by the actual defeat of the U.S. war machine in the field. In 1912, the Socialist parties met in Basle, Switzerland, to promise that they would not support their governments if war were to begin. But, once the patriotic drums of WW1 began to beat, these promises were forgotten, and most Socialist leaders shamefully encouraged the Working Class youth of Europe out to the slaughter. For all this catalogue of failure, there has been a consistent and active anti-war movement, funded by the Left, in Europe and the U.S., all down the decades. In 2003, half a million people marched in Washington against the Iraq War. Almost a million people marched in London. In many ways, a dramatic success. Of course, the war was not stopped, but, it can be claimed that the imperialist propaganda machine was severely weakened by such massive display of public rejection. Next time, the imperialists were going to have to be a lot smarter, a lot more seductive – and they were.

It’s a White Man’s World – Your Exclusive Daily Dose of Reality. Raw. Unedited. Uncomfortable.

Wrong Kind of Green Collective

August 26, 2013

by Forrest Palmer

ella-baker1

Thought of the evening:

In commemorating the love fest for the “angelic” MLK Jr. and the March on Washington, I am going to focus on one of the greatest ladies who in my estimation was BETTER than King and much more IMPORTANT in her message and place in history: Ella Baker…There was no better grass roots organizer who worked mainly behind the scenes in the 20th century than this lady……due to her somewhat open aggression towards the Southern Christian Leadership Council, she was disallowed from speaking at the March on Washington, which was a slap in the face since her history in HUMAN rights movements had preceded King by almost 20 years…SHE deserved to speak BEFORE him since her sacrifices and work PRECEDED and SURPASSED HIS…in fact, there were NO WOMEN who were scheduled to speak on that day and it took a protest to finally get three on the dais…As much as we look at King in such reverential terms today, he was human and had flaws like we all do and I think that this god like presence that overshadows EVERYTHING in the black community is DETRIMENTAL since it relegates what is right or wrong to what ONE MAN would have thought on whatever subject even if he had no KNOWLEDGE on the topic…In all honesty, I don’t think that Baker would have been pleased with this statue being placed at the National Mall for King…judging by her past, she would have wanted it to be a monument to ALL the women and men who gave just as much and some even MORE to the movement…

“Doctors” Behind Syrian Chemical Weapons Claims are Aiding Terrorists

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Land Destroyer

August 25, 2013

by Tony Cartalucci

The “evidence” upon which the West is propping up its narrative of the Syrian government using chemical weapons against large numbers of civilians hinges so far entirely on claims made by “Doctors Without Borders.” In the New York Times article, “Signs of Chemical Attack Detailed by Aid Group,” it is reported:

An international aid group said Saturday that medical centers it supported near the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack near Damascus received more than 3,000 patients showing symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic nerve agents on the morning of the reported attack.

Of those, 355 died, said the group, Doctors Without Borders.

The statement is the first issued by an international organization working in Syria about the attack on Wednesday in the suburbs northeast of Damascus, the capital.

While it is often described by the Western media as “independent,” nothing could be further from the truth.

To begin with, Doctors Without Borders is fully funded by the very same corporate financier interests behind Wall Street and London’s collective foreign policy, including regime change in Syria and neighboring Iran. Doctors Without Borders’ own annual report (2010 report can be accessed here), includes as financial donors, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital, and a myriad of other corporate-financier interests.

Talk Nation Radio: Jean Bricmont: Keep Humanitarian Imperialism Out of Syria

David Swanson’s Blog

August 25, 2013

 

Jean Bricmont is the author of Humanitarian Imperialism, and of a recent article on CounterPunch called “The Wishful Thinking Left.”  Bricmont is a member of the Division of Sciences of the Royal Academy for Sciences, Letters and Arts of Belgium.

https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-jean

You can say no to attacking Syria here: http://bit.ly/LWd85d

Total run time: 29:00

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Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

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Institutional Control of Social Struggles – Miguel Amoros

 

“For real protest, the institutionalized opposition is the problem, the enemy and the main threat.”
“…any struggle that does not challenge the model of capitalist society is condemned to reinforce it.”
Institutional Control of Social Struggles - Miguel Amorós

Transcript of a lecture delivered at a presentation-debate held at the pirate university of Viladecans, December 9, 2009.

Translated in August 2013 from the Spanish original available online at: http://charlaspoliticarabanchel.blogspot.com/2013/01/el-control-insitucional-de-las-luchas.html

Miguel Amorós argues that the traditional mechanisms of social control and integration (parties and trade unions) have been undermined by capitalist development itself; that “the real crisis is the one that derives from the radical incompatibility of capitalism with life on Earth”, the crisis of the “external limits” of capitalism; that the “social question” thus assumes the form of the “defense of territory”, of “a different way of life”, and “the rural world” against the depredations of “sustainable development”; and that, “for real protest, the institutionalized opposition is the problem, the enemy and the main threat”.