Wednesday, August 29, 2018
Leak From Censored Israel Lobby Film Exposes Anti-Palestinian Operatives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=51PIq8iU-Tw
Greece was never bailed out; it remains a debtor’s prison and the EU won’t let go of the keys
Yanis Varoufakis
Over the past week, the
world’s media have been proclaiming the successful completion of the Greek
financial rescue program mounted in 2010 by the European Union and the
International Monetary Fund. Headlines celebrated the end of Greece’s bailout,
even the termination of austerity.
Buoyant reports from ground
zero of the eurozone crisis portrayed Europe’s eight-year long Greek
intervention as a paradigm of judicious European solidarity with its black
sheep; a case of “tough love” that, reportedly, worked.
A more careful reading of the
facts points to a different reality. In the very week that a devastated Greece entered another
42 years of harsh austerity and deeper debt bondage (2018-2060), how can the
end of austerity and Greece’s regained financial independence be presented as
fact? Instead, last week should be cited in our universities’ media schools and
economics departments as an example of how consent can be built internationally
around a preposterous lie.
But let’s begin by defining
our terms. What is a bailout and why is Greece’s version exceptional and
never-ending? Following the banking
debacle in 2008, almost every government bailed out the banks. In the UK
and US, governments famously gave the green light to, respectively, the Bank of
England and the Federal Reserve to print
mountains of public money to refloat the banks. Additionally, the UK
and US governments borrowed large sums to further aid the failing banks while
their central banks financed much of those debts.
On the European continent, a
far worse drama was unfolding due to the EU’s odd decision, back in 1998, to
create monetary union featuring a European Central Bank without a state to
support it politically and 19 governments responsible for salvaging their banks
in times of financial tumult, but without a central bank to aid them. Why this
anomalous arrangement? Because the German condition for swapping the
deutschmark for the euro was a total ban on any central bank financing of banks
or governments – Italian or Greek, say.
So, when in 2009 the French
and German banks proved even more insolvent than those of Wall Street or the
City, there was no central bank with the legal authority, or backed by the
political will, to save them. Thus, in 2009, even Germany’s Chancellor
Merkel panicked when told that her government had to inject,
overnight, €406bn of taxpayers’ money into the German banks.
Alas, it was not enough. A few
months later, Mrs Merkel’s aides informed her that, just like the German banks,
the over-indebted Greek state was finding it impossible to roll over its debt.
Had it declared its bankruptcy, Italy, Ireland, Spain and Portugal would follow
suit, with the result that Berlin and Paris would have faced a fresh bailout of
their banks greater than €1tn. At that point, it was decided that the Greek
government could not be allowed to tell the truth, that is, confess to its
bankruptcy.
To maintain the lie, insolvent
Athens was given, under the smokescreen of “solidarity with the Greeks”, the
largest loan in human history, to be passed on immediately to the German and
French banks. To pacify angry German parliamentarians, that gargantuan loan was
given on condition of brutal austerity for the Greek people, placing them in a
permanent great depression.
To get a feel for the
devastation that ensued, imagine what would have happened in the UK if RBS,
Lloyds and the other City banks had been rescued without the help of the Bank
of England and solely via foreign loans to the exchequer. All granted on the
condition that UK wages would be reduced by 40%, pensions by 45%, the minimum
wage by 30%, NHS spending by 32%. The UK would now be the wasteland of Europe, just as Greece
is today.
But did this nightmare not end
last week? Not in the slightest. Technically speaking, the Greek bailouts had
two components. The first entailed the EU and the IMF granting the Greek government
some financial facility by which to pretend to be repaying its debts. Then
there was the harsh austerity taking the form of ridiculously high tax rates
and savage cuts in pensions, wages, public health and education.
Last week, the third bailout
package did end, just as the second
had ended in 2015 and the first
in 2012. We now have a fourth such package that differs from the past three
in two unimportant ways. Instead of new loans, payments of €96.6bn that were
due to begin in 2023 will be deferred until after 2032, when the monies must be
repaid with interest on top of other large repayments previously scheduled.
And, second, instead of calling it a fourth bailout, the EU has named it,
triumphantly, the “end of the bailout”.
Ridiculously high VAT and
small business tax rates will, of course, continue, as will fresh pension cuts
and new punitive income tax rates for the poorest that have been scheduled for
2019. The Greek government has also committed to maintaining a long-term budget
surplus target, not counting debt repayments (3.5% of national income until
2021, and 2.2% during 2022-2060) that demands permanent austerity, a target
that the IMF itself gives less than 6% probability of ever being attained by any
eurozone country.
In summary, after having
bailed out French and German banks at the expense of Europe’s poorest citizens,
and after having turned Greece into a debtor’s prison, last week Greece’s
creditors decided to declare victory. Having put Greece into a coma, they made
it permanent and declared it “stability”: they pushed our people off a cliff
and celebrated their bounce off the hard rock of a great depression as proof of
“recovery”. To quote Tacitus, they made a desert and called it peace.
Yanis Varoufakis is
the co-founder of DiEM25 and the former finance minister of Greece
Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders praise McCain: An object lesson in the politics of the pseudo-left
28 August 2018
Amidst the outpouring of
praise from all sections of the political establishment for Republican Senator
John McCain, who died on Saturday, two statements stand out.
The first was from Vermont
senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who tweeted: “John
McCain was an American hero, a man of decency and honor and a friend of mine.
He will be missed not just in the US Senate but by all Americans who respect
integrity and independence.”
The second was from Democratic
Socialists of America member and New York congressional candidate Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted: “John McCain’s legacy represents an unparalleled
example of human decency and American service. As an intern, I learned a lot
about the power of humanity in government through his deep friendship with Sen.
Kennedy. He meant so much, to so many. My prayers are with his family.”
Ocasio-Cortez posted with her
tweet the editorial from the Washington Post on McCain’s death, “John
McCain, the irreplaceable American,” which praised McCain for his work on
“national defense and deterrence of foreign aggression” and for “[rising] above
party politics to pursue what he honestly saw as the national interest.”
What, one is compelled to ask,
are these two individuals, who present themselves as figures of the left and
even socialists, talking about? What is McCain’s legacy of “human decency and
American service?” What made him an “American hero?”
Was his human decency on
display when he was dropping bombs on the Vietnamese people, or when he was acting
as one of the earliest supporters of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which led to
the deaths of one million people? Was his heroism expressed in his call for the
bombing of Iran, his visit with Islamic fundamentalist organizations
spearheading the CIA-backed civil war in Syria, or his demands, up to his last
day, for stepped-up aggression against Russia?
The list of countries McCain
advocated bombing is a long one, and there is no war launched by the US that he
did not support. Political positions have consequences, and McCain had the
blood of many hundreds of thousands of people on his hands. A genuine socialist
would not praise his “human decency,” but demand, were he still alive, his
prosecution for war crimes.
The praise for McCain by
Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders is a calculated political decision. It reveals
everything about the politics of the Democratic Party and the particular role
played by these figures and the organizations that promote them.
On the part of Sanders, his
declaration of solidarity with McCain is in continuity with his own Democratic
Party election campaign in 2016. Sanders proclaimed his support for the foreign
policy of the Obama administration, including its wars in the Middle East, and
said that a Sanders administration would utilize Special Forces and drone
strikes—“all that and more.” After losing the primaries, Sanders endorsed
Hillary Clinton, seeking to channel the social opposition reflected in support
for his campaign behind the candidate of the military-intelligence establishment.
As for Ocasio-Cortez, her
evolution is an example of the general rule of bourgeois politics that the
deeper the crisis, the more rapidly political tendencies and individuals are
exposed for what they really are. It is only two months since Ocasio-Cortez
defeated incumbent Democrat Joseph Crowley in the primary election for the 14th
Congressional District of New York.
How quickly this “socialist”
has expressed her fidelity to establishment bourgeois politics! She has moved
to distance herself from any association with socialism, backtracked on her
previous criticisms of Israel, pledged her support for “border security,” stood
beside Sanders as the latter endorsed the Democrats’ anti-Russia campaign, and
now heaps gratuitous and obsequious praise on one of the most reactionary
warmongers in American politics. And there are still two months to go before
the election.
At the time of Ocasio-Cortez’s
primary victory, the World Socialist Web Site wrote that
“anyone who suggests that her victory marks a shift to the left in the
Democratic Party should be told, in no uncertain terms: Curb your enthusiasm!
The DSA is not fighting for socialism, but to strengthen the Democratic Party,
one of the two main capitalist parties in the United States.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s comments have
drawn criticism from many who backed her campaign. However, those who may have
been attracted to the DSA based on the impression that it is a socialist or
anti-war organization should draw the necessary conclusions.
The Democratic Party is
engaged in a ferociously right-wing campaign in its conflict with the Trump
administration. Its focus is not on Trump’s fascistic policies or his own
warmongering, but on the claim that Trump is insufficiently committed to war in
the Middle East and aggression against Russia. The Democrats have utilized the
death of McCain as part of a calculated strategy, elevating him—along with
figures such as former CIA Director John Brennan—as political heroes.
They, along with the corporate
media and the Republican Party establishment, are seeking to use McCain’s death
as an opportunity to shift public opinion in favor of war and political
reaction.
In the 2018 midterm elections,
as the WSWS has documented,
the Democrats are running an unprecedented number of former intelligence and
military operatives as candidates. The promotion of groups such as the DSA is
an integral part of this strategy. “The politics of the ‘CIA Democrats,’” the
Socialist Equality Party noted in the resolution passed
at its Congress last month, “is not in conflict with, but rather corresponds
to, the pseudo-left politics of the upper-middle class, as expressed in
organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the
International Socialist Organization (ISO).”
The role of Ocasio-Cortez,
Sanders, the DSA and the ISO, is to give a “socialist” label to politics that
is entirely in line with the right-wing, militarist and imperialist character
of the Democratic Party.
The elevation of the DSA does
not represent a movement toward socialism, but rather a defensive reaction by the
ruling class against what it perceives to be an existential danger. The
corporate-financial elite is well aware of polls that show growing support for
socialism and opposition to capitalism among workers and particularly among
young people. The DSA is therefore promoted by the media (the New York
Times published yet another prominent article on Sunday boosting
Ocasio-Cortez and the DSA) even as genuine left-wing and anti-war publications,
above all the World Socialist Web Site, face ever more direct forms of
Internet censorship.
The politics of the DSA and
the broader pseudo-left has far more in common with the politics of McCain than
it does with genuine socialism. There can be no question as to what role these
organizations would play if brought into positions of power. A similar path has
already been trod by the Left Party in Germany, which has implemented austerity
measures and promoted the anti-immigrant policies of the far-right AfD, and
Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) in Greece, which since coming to power
in 2015 has implemented the brutal austerity measures demanded by the European
banks.
The Socialist Equality Party is
fighting to organize workers and youth on the basis of a socialist program.
This means not mild and insincere reformist demands to provide cover for the
right-wing, militarist Democratic Party, but the mobilization of the working
class, in the United States and internationally, for the revolutionary
overthrow of capitalism. The building of such a movement must be based on the
exposure of and struggle against figures such as Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders and
the treacherous politics they espouse.
Joseph Kishore
Media Continues Writing Premature Obituaries for the Democratic Left
AUGUST 28, 2018
JUSTIN ANDERSON
The insurgent left wing of the
Democratic Party, sometimes self-identified as democratic socialists and
exemplified by rising star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and associated with groups
like Bernie Sanders’ Our
Revolution, the Justice
Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of
America (DSA), took some losses in primaries on August 7. These included
high-profile candidates like Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate for Michigan governor
and Brent Welder in Kansas’s 2nd district, along with losses by Cori Bush in
Missouri’s 1st district. Following the losses, corporate media outlets were
quick to declare the Democratic left wing dead in the water:
“Bernie and His Army Are
Losing 2018” (Politico, 8/8/18)
“Down Goes Socialism” (Politico, 8/8/18)
“Democratic Party’s Liberal
Insurgency Hits a Wall in Midwest Primaries” (Washington Post, 8/8/18)
“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s
Movement Failed to Deliver Any Stunners Tuesday Night” (CNN, 8/8/18)
“The Far Left Is Losing” (US
News & World Report, 8/8/18)
“Most Candidates Backed by
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders Falter” (Wall Street Journal, 8/8/18)
“Socialist Pin-Up Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez Sees Four Candidates FAIL in Tuesday Primary Contests, With One
Coming in Fourth Out of Five” (Daily Mail, 8/8/18)
“Socialist Torchbearers Flame
Out in Key Races, Despite Blitz by Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez” (Fox News, 8/8/18)
“If Democrats Embrace
Socialism to Get Away From Donald Trump, They Can Kiss the Midterms Goodbye” (USA
Today, 8/22/18)
“Why ‘Medicare for All’ Is
Playing Poorly in Democratic Primaries” (Politico, 8/21/18)
Despite these eager
obituaries, there were also plenty of wins for insurgent Democrats on August 7.
Democratic Socialist and Our Revolution candidate Rashida Tlaib won her
primary for the House seat in Michigan’s 13th district; since she is running
unopposed in the general election, she will become the first
Palestinian-American woman in Congress. James Thompson also won the
Democratic nomination in Kansas’s 4th district, and will face Ron Estes in a
tough race in a deep-red district. Sarah Smith came in second in
Washington’s 9th district top-two primary, and will face incumbent Democrat
Adam Smith in the general election. Progressive candidates also earned big wins
in a number of state and local races,
and Missouri voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to overturn the
state’s anti-union
right-to-work laws.
More wins for left-leaning
candidates came the following week on August 14. Somali refugee Ilhan Omar,
who won her
primary in Minnesota’s 5th district, will join Rashida Tlaib to become the
first Muslim women to be elected to Congress. Randy Bryce won his
primary to run for Paul Ryan’s soon-to-be-vacant seat in Wisconsin’s 1st
district. Progressive Jahana Hayes won against Mary Glassman (who was
surprisingly supported by a local
Our Revolution chapter) in Connecticut’s 5th district, and will likely become
the state’s first female African-American Democrat in Congress.
Sanders-endorsee Christine Hallquist won the
gubernatorial primary in Vermont, becoming the first trans
woman nominated for a major political office.
There were losses as well as
wins in the August 14 primary, like Kaniela Saito Ing in Hawaii’s 11th
district. Yet the major wins on August 14 made the premature obituaries of
Sanders’s candidates look like wishful reporting.
Many of the articles
downplaying the viability of insurgent candidates point
outthat their victories tend to happen in safe Democratic seats. But
progressive insurgent candidates usually forgo corporate funding and often
fight uphill battles against opponents funded by the DNC and deep-pocketed
corporate PACs. Some
candidates have even been openly
suppressed by the Democratic Party. Given this political terrain, it’s
perhaps unsurprising that candidates endorsed by the Democratic Party and other
establishment groups, like EMILY’s List, have on average been more
successful than candidates backed by more iconoclastic organizations.
Looking at the actual mix of
success and failure by insurgent Democrats, it’s hard not to conclude that they
have received inordinately skeptical treatment by corporate media, particularly
receiving much more negative
press than the 2010 Tea Party insurgency in the Republican Party,
which Sanders’ movement has often been compared to. CBS
News(8/13/18)
even called Ocasio-Cortez the “Sarah Palin of the left.”
But rather than comparing
coverage of the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party to that given the
successful but heavily astroturfed Tea
Party, a more apt contrast might be to the way media have dealt with the
large-scale electoral failures of the establishment wing of the Democratic
Party. The Obama-led Democratic Party leadership has been largely spared media
scrutiny of its electoral record, despite losing more
offices in Obama’s two terms than any president since Eisenhower,
including 69 House seats, 14 Senate seats and nine governorships, not to
mention losing a whopping 968 state
legislature seats, the most of any two-term president. Many pundits in
the corporate media
actually rushed to defend Obama’s
tenure, insisting that it’s normal for two-term presidents to lose
governorships and congressional seats for their party–which is true, though
Obama set records for such losses.
When one takes a historical
look at socialism in the United States, Sanders’ insurgency seems to be doing
remarkably well: The previous high point of socialism in the United States was perhaps
the early 20th century, when the US elected two Socialist Party congressmembers
in 1910 and 1917, and socialist
Eugene V. Debs garnered 6 percent of the popular vote in the 1912 presidential
election. In the wake of the Red Scare crackdowns that followed both world
wars, the US socialist movement has hardly sniffed political power during the
Cold War, and has been pretty much nonexistent on the national level over the
past 30 years, save Bernie Sanders and former DSA vice chair Ron Dellums, who
represented Berkeley in the House of Representatives from 1971–1998.
Even if today’s socialist wing
of the Democratic Party hasn’t won every underdog primary race against
better-funded centrist opponents, it is apparent that progressives are winning
the battle of ideas within the party. Policies such as Medicare
for All, free college, student loan forgiveness and jobs guarantees, all
formerly considered radical positions, are now expected to be litmus
tests in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. Even more
importantly, they are becoming quite
popular with voters: A recent Reuters poll showed
that Medicare for All has support from 70 percent of the US electorate,
including 52 percent of Republicans, while another 60 percent of the
electorate supports free college tuition.
Support for democratic
socialism in general is on the rise as well. A recent Gallup poll revealed
that 57 percent of Democrats have a positive view of socialism, compared to 47
percent who view capitalism favorably; socialism gets the approval of a
majority of millennial voters. It’s not necessarily clear what “socialism”
means to those who like it, with possibilities ranging from New Deal–style
social programs to worker-controlled production. Still, it’s safe to say that a
majority of Democratic voters want an anti-corporate party that represents the
interests of the working class and minorities against the rich, despite
whatever the media say about the electoral success or failure of the politicians
that embody such policies.
With this recent ideological
shift, the specter of a socialist bogeyman has jolted the media into
crisis-management mode. Conservative news stations like Fox News scream on
the daily about how scary democratic
socialism is, while print outlets continue to churn out anti-socialist hit
pieces:
“Democratic Socialism Is Dem
Doom” (New York Times, 7/6/18)
“Venezuela’s Inflation Will
Hit 1 Million Percent. Thanks, Socialism.” (Washington Post, 7/27/18)
“Democrats Embracing Socialism
Is Dangerous for America” (The Hill, 8/12/18)
“Bernie Sanders and the Misery
of Socialism” (Wall Street Journal, 6/25/18)
“Sorry, Democratic
Socialists—You’re Still Pushing Poison” (New York Post, 8/5/18)
“They Call Themselves
Socialists, but They Don’t Know the Meaning of the Word” (Miami Herald, 7/26/18)
“It’s the Spoiled Children of
America Who Are Drawn to Socialism” (Chicago Tribune, 7/26/18)
“Democratic Socialism
Threatens Minorities” (The Atlantic, 8/9/18)
“Democratic Socialism: Who
Knew That ‘Free’ Could Cost So Much?” (Investor’s Business Daily, 8/8/18)
“Socialism Returns: An Old
Adversary” (Commentary, 8/14/18)
“Democratic Socialism Breaks
the Bank” (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 8/16/18)
The most common argument in
these pieces is to yell that the US can’t afford social programs like Medicare
for All or free college, evidenced by pieces such as “Democrats’ ‘Socialism’
Will Bury Us in Debt We Won’t Be Able to Get Out From Under” (MarketWatch, 7/11/18).
For her part, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded to such critiques by calling
out the hypocrisy of whining about costs for universal healthcare in a CNN interview
(8/9/18):
“When it comes to bills for tax cuts and unlimited war, we seem to invent that
money very easily.”
Yet CNN’s coverage of
her comments parroted the same old line: that Medicare for All would cost an
eye-popping $37 trillion, at least according to research by the Koch
brothers–funded Mercatus Center. However, like most outlets afraid of big
spending that doesn’t involve tax cuts for billionaires or bloated military
budgets, CNN failed to even mention that the $37 trillion figure is
the cost estimate for Medicare for All over a 10-year period, and that this
figure is actually $2 trillion less than projected US healthcare costs under
the current system over the same period (FAIR.org, 7/31/18).
Of course, this isn’t the
first time Sanders or his socialist allies have received irrational opposition
from corporate media. As FAIR’s Adam Johnson (3/8/16)
reported during the 2016 presidential primaries, the Washington Post at
one point ran 16 negative articles about Sanders in a 16-hour period. Sanders’
plans for Medicare for All have also been subject to disingenuous and incorrect “factchecks”
by outlets like CNN and
the Washington
Post. During her primary run against high-ranking New York Democratic Rep.
Joseph Crowley, Ocasio-Cortez at first received barely a
peep in the mainstream press, but after her surprise victory was subject to
endless profiles and a flurry of attacks by
the media,
and is now being subjected to demands for public debates from hyper-sensitive
right-wing pundits.
Michelle Goldberg of the New
York Times (8/9/18),
perhaps the only person in the right-leaning Times op-ed
lineup who could be considered sympathetic to Sanders’ politics, noted that
while insurgent candidates might not have won every primary, the left wing of
the Democratic party was nonetheless winning hard-fought victories on the
strength of its ideology and electoral pragmatism. Whether left-leaning
Democrats fall flat in the midterms or not, their ideas have persuaded America
that socialism is a legitimate and popular political movement, and will likely
be a strong voting bloc in the next Congress. Whether corporate media choose to
acknowledge its relevance or continue its fear-mongering remains to be seen.
*Correction: This piece
initially stated that Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez endorsee Sarah Smith lost her
primary in Washington’s 9th district. Washington’s primary system mandates that
the top two vote recipients in the primary face off in the general election. Smith
came in second, and will face incumbent Adam Smith in the general.
Peace Activists Block Boeing Weapons Facility with Bus to Protest War on Yemen
By: Ben Norton | August 27,
2018
Peace activists in St.
Charles, Missouri blocked the entrance to a weapons facility run by the arms
manufacturer Boeing on Monday, August 27, in protest of the joint US-Saudi war
on Yemen.
The anti-war demonstrators
barricaded the street with a bus, on which they wrote “Boeing gains from
Yemen’s pain.”
They used a bus as a symbol of
Saudi Arabia’s August 9 bombing of a school bus in Yemen, in which at least 40
children and 11 adults were killed and another 79 civilians were wounded with a
US-made bomb.
The Earth
Defense Coalition said in a press release that the “action was done in
solidarity with the people of Yemen as they are murdered by Saudi Arabia using
weapons supplied by Boeing and other weapons manufacturers.”
The group noted that the St.
Charles Boeing office manufactures “smart bomb” kits like those used by Saudi
Arabia in Yemen.
RIGHT NOW two activists are
currently LOCKED DOWN TO A SCHOOL BUS blockading the entrance to the offices of
#Boeing, near #StLouis. The action is
solidarity with the people of #Yemen.
The “lockdown” protest began
at 6 am EST and lasted for more than five hours.
Phillip Flagg, one of the
protesters on the bus, said in a statement:
To the people of Yemen I’d
like to say that we have heard your cries and that you are not alone. On the
contrary, it seems clear to me that both the Yemeni and American people share a
common enemy in the United States government and the corporations that control
it. The same corporate state that is responsible for your suffering in Yemen is
responsible for our suffering from Flint to Ferguson to the bayous of Louisiana.
Activist Amber Mae said two
protesters were arrested in the action and charged with obstructing and
resisting and are being held on $600 cash bond. “One will post bail, the
other has chosen to remain incarcerated awaiting time with a judge,” Mae said.
Heather De Mian, a citizen
journalist who uses the handle @MissJupiter1957, livestreamed video footage
and reported from the site of the protest:
Protesters with a bus blocking
entrance to Boeing plant in St Charles, Missouri https://www.pscp.tv/w/blPfHTY0MjgxNDZ8MWRSS1pnZXFubmdHQhAx99CA85d-fjPZ71PMoM9vi3v0tRjQQPVv5bsxz4VZ …
De Mian said the police parked
their cars around the bus to prevent reporters from filming it.
Protesters using a bus to
block the entrance to the Boeing Plant in St Charles, MO.
I'm told there are protesters chained together & the bus represents the school bus bombed in Yemen.https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/17/middleeast/us-saudi-yemen-bus-strike-intl/index.html … pic.twitter.com/DzPBb3IkCb
I'm told there are protesters chained together & the bus represents the school bus bombed in Yemen.https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/17/middleeast/us-saudi-yemen-bus-strike-intl/index.html … pic.twitter.com/DzPBb3IkCb
The St Charles Police have
decided to violate the First Amendment Freedom of the Press & have
strategically parked their vehicles to prevent filming of their handling of the
protesters.
Yemeni journalist Ahmad
Algohbary wrote in support of the protest, “As one of the Yemeni people, I
express my deep gratitude for those activists for standing in solidarity with
us and for blocking both entrances to Boeing Defense Building 598 in St.
Charles facility today morning.”
“The bus represents the school
bus crime by #US bomb in #Yemen,” Algohbary said.
As one of the Yemeni people, I
express my deep gratitude for those activists for standing in solidarity with
us and for blocking both entrances to Boeing Defense Building 598 in St.
Charles facility today morning.
The bus represents the school bus crime by #US bomb in #Yemen.
The bus represents the school bus crime by #US bomb in #Yemen.
“Thank you so much, from
Yemen, wrote journalist Nasser
Morshid Arrabyee. “Yemen bus will remain spot of shame and disgrace on
killers. Your bus will remain symbol of love in our debt.”
Economic Update: Capitalism, Changed by its Contradictions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Cqi70chieE
US Government Admits It’s Making Fake Social Media Accounts to Spread Propaganda in Cuba
By: Ben Norton | August 27,
2018
The United States has
repeatedly accused the Russian and Iranian governments of using social media to
spread “disinformation” and foment chaos. Under US government pressure, Big
Tech corporations have banned large numbers of accounts accused (in
some cases falsely) of being Russian and Iranian “troll” accounts.
At the same time, however, the
US government is doing exactly what it is accusing its enemies of: the US
Office of Cuba Broadcasting is secretly creating fake social media accounts to
inspire dissent and to spread right-wing pro-US, pro-capitalist propaganda in
Cuba.
During the Cold War, the US government tried
to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro more than 600 times.
Washington also simultaneously waged an information war. For decades, the US
has maintained an elaborate propaganda apparatus committed to toppling Cuba’s
socialist government.
In its 2019
congressional budget justification report — which was first
reported on by the Miami
New Times — the US government’s Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG)
disclosed that it “is establishing on island digital teams to create
non-branded local Facebook accounts to disseminate information.”
The US government body noted
that these “native pages increase the chances of appearing on Cuban Facebook
users newsfeeds.”
And it is not just Facebook
where the US government will be creating these accounts. “The same strategy
will be replicated on other preferred social media networks,” the BBG added.
The propaganda office said it
“will continue to engage audiences on the internet using Facebook Live and
YouTube as distribution channels into Cuba as the Communist regime has been
wary of blocking these popular channels.”
Put more directly, the US
government is creating fake accounts on Facebook and YouTube inside Cuba and
going out of its way to portray these profiles as “local,” to more effectively
spread this propaganda among Cubans as if it were somehow organic.
“Working with Cuban
independent journalists and encouraging citizens to create user generated
content on the island for OCB’s platforms continues to be a top priority,” the
US government body continued in its report. “As Wi-Fi service has expanded in
Cuba and with substantial numbers of Cubans now using Facebook and other social
networking sites, OCB’s social media presence has increased.”
Propaganda broadcast to 11
percent of Cubans on a weekly basis
The US Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB)
presently has 117 employees and an annual budget of $28.1 million. It estimates
its audience at 1 million.
The OCB, which is
headquartered in Miami, Florida, runs the broadcaster Radio y Televisión Martí,
along with the website Martínoticias.com. These outlets publish extremely
partisan reports that have a very clear conservative bias, and give large
platforms to right-wing leaders in Latin America — not just from Cuba, but
also from
Venezuela and beyond.
The OCB also holds the annual Cuba Internet
Freedom Conference in Miami.
The US government body claims
that its propaganda broadcasts “currently reach 11.1% of Cubans on a weekly
basis with audio, video, and digital content delivered by radio, satellite TV,
online, and on distinctly Cuban digital ‘packages’ (paquetes).”
It also claims that 96 percent
of its audience say the US government propaganda “helps them form opinions
about current events and most users both share information they get from Martí
and would recommend it to others.”
Distributing propaganda on
DVDs and flash drives inside Cuba
The US Broadcasting Board of
Governors furthermore reveals in its 2019 report that its Office of Cuba
Broadcasting distributes propaganda on DVDs and flash drives inside Cuba, for
those who do not have internet access.
“To circumvent the blockage of
TV Marti signals, OCB is dramatically increasing the distribution of DVD’s and
USB drives with Marti content, radically altering its distribution strategy to
avoid dealing with bulk amounts of content entrance into the island,” the
report noted.
“The content is now downloaded
once inside the island, copied on the island and distributed immediately.
Previously, the information was downloaded elsewhere and carried onto the
island. Much of it was intercepted at the border before reaching its intended
audience,” the OCB continued. “This optimization of OCB’s content supply chain
will increase its availability on the island tenfold at the same cost level.”
A long history of US
government propaganda campaigns worldwide
This is far from the first
time the US government has been exposed for manipulating social media to spread
propaganda. And these US propaganda operations are by no means limited to
China.
The Broadcasting Board of
Governors noted in its report that its propaganda efforts are targeting
audiences “in Russia and its periphery, China, the Democratic People’s Republic
of Korea, Iran, and Cuba.”
The US government has long
used social media to sow discord in Cuba in particular. In 2014, it was
revealed that the US Agency for International Development (USAID),
the government’s ostensibly “humanitarian” soft-power arm, had created a fake
Twitter-like app called ZunZuneo to
stir unrest inside Cuba.
In January 2018, the US State
Department announced the creation of a Cuba
Internet Task Force to try to undermine the socialist government in
Havana.
Cuban state media condemned
this new institution as an attempt “to subvert Cuba’s internal order.” The
Cuban government’s newspaper Granma wrote, “In the past, Washington has
used phrases like ‘working for freedom of expression’ and ‘expanding access to
internet in Cuba’ to cover up destabilizing plans.”
And back in 2011, The
Guardian likewise revealed that the US government was creating fake
“sock puppet” accounts on social media to spread propaganda and manipulate
public opinion.
Ben Norton is a producer and
reporter for The Real News. His work focuses primarily on U.S. foreign policy,
the Middle East, media criticism, and movements for economic and social
justice. Ben Norton was previously a staff writer at Salon and AlterNet. You
can find him on Twitter at @BenjaminNorton.