Politicians have invented a lot of new definitions for old words lately:
A “concentration camp” holding children is now a “facility.”
“Camping” is what the homeless do.
Thursday, March 4, 2021
Has anything changed?
Trump helped defend the Saudi sheiks from being charged with murder and now Biden is doing the same thing.
Trump recognized Guaido as president of Venezuela and so does Biden.
What has changed other than the faces of those making excuses for these imperialist creeps?
Who speaks for the working class?
One thing that really gets me is when these well-heeled muddle-headed upper middle class intellectuals who have never worked a day in their lives lecture workers about “effective policies for workers” and these policies always end up being “progressive policy directives” never real solutions that amount to anything except when the “solutions” are limited to a very small section of the population with the rest of working people being told they must patiently wait for their problems to be resolved.
This is the case with those phony liberals, progressives and leftists doing the bidding for the Democrats in continuing to pretend they are for “Medicare for All.”
Do you know how many working people have gone without health care and/or faced medical poverty and/or bankruptcy since the Democrats first started promising “Medicare for All” as a campaign gimmick in 1948... over seventy years ago?
At the time, “Medicare for All” was a ploy used to distract people from the huge movement for a National Public Health Care System and posed as a promise in order to stop the developing Progressive Party from gaining momentum.
Democrats, and their most loyal hacks (like Bernie Sanders) have used “Medicare for All” as such a dishonest ploy ever since.
Effective policies for workers need to be formulated by workers around real solutions to our problems... there is no reason why in the richest country in the world all the pressing problems causing so much misery for working class families can’t be solved immediately like the urgency requires.
Why must working people “patiently wait” for decades to have their problems solved when trillions of dollars are allocated continually and repeatedly to bail out banks and big-business while funding militarism and these dirty imperialist interventions and wars get immediate attention?
I find it interesting those who counsel workers to “patiently wait” for a redress of their grievances and for solutions to their problems never provide such counsel to the Wall Street millionaires and billionaires and are always quick to hand over the resources of government to these capitalist oligarchs without questions... and without delay.
A fundamental question ignored
The Rasmussen polling agency recently asked people this question:
“Who’s setting the agenda in Washington, DC these days – President Biden, the Republican opposition, Congress or the national media?”
Then the results get picked up by subscribers who include the media and their “talking heads,” the pundits; and this big discussion begins with those who really set the agenda missing from the conversation.
Why didn’t Rasmussen include in the question a fifth option?
What would that fifth option be?
Wall Street.
Wall Street sets the agenda in Washington with its lobbyists bribing every single politician.
Workers have no say in setting the agenda in Washington.
I wonder why no polling agency has ever asked the question:
Do Wall Street employers or the workers they employ set the agenda in Washington?
Doesn’t democracy require this kind of discussion?
Who is afraid to hear what people think should a question like this be posed to the American people?
Those wealthy Wall Street oligarchs who are our employers are afraid of how this kind of question would be discussed and answered in the public square because their stranglehold on power would face a challenge from the working class... a power they fear more than anything... this is why they spend so much money making sure a question like this never gets asked, let alone answered.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott concocts a deadly brew
Some of us may die as a result of Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s thoroughly reactionary and outright stupid announced corona virus policies but that is a chance Abbott is willing to take (with our health and our lives) for his own political expediency as he brings forward this outrageous health policy in order to get attention off of his being in the hip pocket of the oil, gas and energy industry... which includes the Saudi Royal Family, which is part of the Texas energy complex, that Abbott takes bribes from with the end result being the huge fiasco leaving so many Texans in dire straits from as a result of the recent winter storm.
Abbott thinks he can cover his bad policies in one area by bringing forward such outrageously bad decisions in another area.
Playing politics with the health and well-being all the way around...
About what one would expect from a loyal servant to the Saudi oil sheiks who, with Abbott’s help, now dominate so much of the Texas economy and politics in general.
And this guy Abbott is making preparations to run to become president of the United States as he sacrifices our health in order to cover-up his bungling of the winter storm while his Republican Party is pushing legislation in line with the objectives of the Confederacy: secession from the Union... more theater to create a diversion which is simultaneously sowing much division and hate.
This is the same Governor who has been playing to his racist base for years in trying to carry out the execution of an innocent black man he played a primary role in helping to frame: Rodney Reed.
Of course the mainstream media, just like with Trump, just salivates in giving this idiot all kinds of coverage as they build his political career without challenging any of this.
Biden's Wall Street agenda determines his foreign and domestic policy and neither is favorable to the working class.
For all intents and purposes, the majority of the American people are seeing no opposition to Biden’s Wall Street imperialist war agenda while his so-called liberal, progressive and left supporters claim he has some kind of progressive domestic economic agenda with a few saying behind closed doors they don’t support his imperialist foreign policy.
Opposition to war has to be out in the public square for it to be effective; not whispered in back rooms or published on websites most people will never read.
This is the most disgraceful and absurd characterization of Biden’s agenda; these people pretend Biden’s “properly framed progressive sounding policy objectives” reflect actual policy and legislation when nothing could be further from the truth...
Here is the way one outfit headlined an article:
“Mismatch: Biden bombs Syria while pushing progressive economic bill at home
February 26, 2021 2:02 PM CST BY C.J. ATKINS”
There is no “mismatch” between Biden’s foreign and domestic policies and legislation... both are part of Wall Street’s agenda which can be described as imperialist wars abroad financed with austerity measures shoved down the throats of working people and the working class here at home.
Only a very stupid person or a very dishonest person could have written such an article and then very selectively chosen quotes to fit the headline... which the article does.
No wonder people in this country are so confused when a publication claiming to be a left wing working class voice publishes an article like this.
In fact, Biden’s foreign and domestic policies are perfectly matched, not mismatched, to serve Wall Street’s foreign and domestic agenda.
It is impossible for any politician or political party to simultaneously serve Wall Street’s imperialist agenda abroad while meeting the needs of the working class domestically- this is an impossible task... it has never been done because it can’t be done as economists from Karl Marx to the liberal Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith pointed out; Galbraith declared what every single honest economist knows: “you can’t have guns and butter.”
Lyndon Johnson found this out but only understood it towards the end of his life even though his dear progressive friend Alice Glass constantly tried to point out to him that his war in Vietnam sabotaged his “Great Society” goals and objectives... Johnson ended up disowning his entire foreign policy agenda when he endorsed George McGovern for president. That’s why this cartoon hangs so prominently on the wall in the Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas... and his daughter in a audio tribute to her father in the main display says that her father searched for ways to end the war although she doesn’t explain how he sent a dishonest creep like Henry Kissinger to negotiate the peace when Kissinger was really working behind Johnson’s back to support Wall Street’s war machine to keep the war going.
How is it any newspaper claiming to be a working class voice could be so confused as to call Biden’s foreign and domestic policies a “mismatch?”
No president can muster support for a progressive domestic agenda while pushing a reactionary foreign policy agenda if for no other reason no politician can be found who supports a reactionary foreign policy will then turn around and support a progressive economic domestic policy... there is no such political creature so why this pretense that Biden is such a political creature?
And just as the mainstream media has to create big fat lies to muster public support for Wall Street’s imperialist agenda ( a reactionary foreign and domestic agenda ), these phony leftists backing Biden now make the most outrageous claim as the writer cited in the article above that Biden has brought forward legislation, “Widely hailed as one of most progressive economic bills ever considered by Congress...” another great big fat lie used to justify this publication’s previous support for electing Biden.
We need an anti-imperialist movement
This is a pretty good article by Glen Greenwald but he misses the important point that the Saudis own the largest oil refinery (Aramco) in Texas, which is still part of the United States; and these same Saudi Sheiks own one of the largest chemical plants in the world, here in Texas, also.
And these Saudi oil sheiks contribute billions of dollars to the coffers of both the Democratic and Republican parties just like our own Wall Street millionaire and billionaire oligarchs like Bezos, Buffett and Gates.
The Saudi oil Sheiks also own and operate one of the largest, if not the largest oil, gas and chemical distribution networks in the United States... not to mention they are among the largest owners of agricultural land and real estate development in the United States.
None of this bodes well for democracy as these Saudi oil Sheiks demand Democrats and Republicans curb democracy here just the way they do in their own country.
By the way, I don’t see one single person disputing one single thing in this article by Greenwald.
It will take much more than good articles to create a peace-centered U.S. foreign policy... it will take a powerful grassroots citizen’s initiative constituting a powerful anti-imperialist movement of dedicated citizen-activists comprising people from all walks- people who hold a variety of world outlooks committed to working together. It will also take an understanding of how U.S. foreign policy became the property of Wall Street at the conclusion of World War II.
Perhaps if Greenwald continues on the path he is on he will become a real anti-imperialist some day... for now he provides us with a lot of very timely and important information we should be able to use to educate people in building an effective anti-imperialist movement capable of establishing a sane and sensible U.S. foreign policy based on mutual respect and cooperation which will contribute to world peace.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/bidens-protection-of-murderous-saudi-a9c?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxODgzMjA0MiwicG9zdF9pZCI6MzMxNzY2NTgsIl8iOiJqTnd5MiIsImlhdCI6MTYxNDc4NTk5MywiZXhwIjoxNjE0Nzg5NTkzLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTI4NjYyIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.DShARWZ2NqD7PNcwW6eycrSqKv9OPL7j_4qiSpfwa7M&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&fbclid=IwAR2hBoOKmPW-jChMjSd0Sy9xhQwviNGN8ckxink6TvVOIgt2Fa1P91QyJB8