Wednesday, June 6, 2018
'Liberal elites have lost contact with ordinary people' – Žižek on right-wing rise in Europe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3wwYxQUSL8
To understand what just happened in Slovenia, you have to go back to Donald Trump and Roseanne Barr
When you accept where the
left is going wrong, you see why the right is gaining votes
Slavoj Žižek
Nothing unexpected happened in
the Slovene elections: although the anti-immigrant nationalist-populist Slovene
Democratic Party (SDS) of Janez Jansa emerged as the strongest single party,
the ruling centre-left coalition got many more votes. After a protracted
bargaining, this coalition will probably continue to rule and, through its lack
of vision, corruption scandals, and so on, make it sure that SDS will remain a
convenient “fascist” threat, a scare ready to be evoked every four years in
order to blackmail the majority of voters to elect the same “anti-fascist”
pseudo-left.
So let’s first take a look at
the ideology of SDS. Two years ago, a text appeared in Demokracija(25
August 2016), the SDS weekly, written by Bernard Brscic, one of its main
ideologists. He wrote: “George Soros is one of the most depraved and dangerous
people of our time,” responsible for “the invasion of the negroid and Semitic
hordes and thereby for the twilight of the EU… as a typical talmudo-Zionist, he
is a deadly enemy of the Western civilisation, nation state and white, European
man.”
His goal, Brscic went on, is
to build a “rainbow coalition composed of social marginals like faggots, feminists,
Muslims and work-hating cultural Marxists” which would then perform “a
deconstruction of the nation-state, and transform EU into a multicultural
dystopia of the United States of Europe.” Furthermore, he wrote, Soros is
inconsistent in his promotion of multiculturalism: “He promotes it exclusively
in Europe and the US, while in the case of Israel, he, in a way which is for me
totally justified, agrees with its monoculturalism, latent racism and building
a wall. In contrast to EU and US, he also does not demand from Israel to open
its borders and accept ‘refugees’. A hypocrisy proper to Talmudo-Zionism.”
SDS also sympathises with
Donald Trump – not least because his wife Melania is of Slovene origins – so it
is crucial to look at how Slovenia fits into the ongoing tensions between EU
and the US.
After Trump fired the opening
shot in the trade war with three of its biggest trading partners by deciding to
begin levying tariffs on imports of steel and aluminium from the EU, Canada and
Mexico, the question is: will he get his comeuppance? Neither Russia nor China
can do this – they are caught in the same game as Trump, they basically all
speak the same language of “America (Russia, China…) first.” Only Europe can
deliver it, and the new situation offers Europe a unique chance to assert
itself as a sovereign power block and to act as if the pact with Iran is still
valid. But in this new world of rising popularism, does Europe have enough
strength and unity to do it?
Will the new Eastern European
post-communist “axis of evil” (stretching from the Baltic States to Slovenia
and Croatia) follow the EU resistance to the US, or will it bow to the US and
thus provide yet another proof that the quick expansion of the EU to the east
was a mistake?
The populist revolt across
Europe has been triggered by the fact that people trust less and less the
Brussels technocracy, experiencing it as a centre of power with no democratic
legitimisation. The result of the Italian elections last week marked the first
time in a developed western European country that Eurosceptic populists came
properly to power.
There is little doubt that
issues of the largely ignored working class are driving both Euroscepticism and
support of Trump in the US, with global ramifications. Consider the current
uproar in the US over the abrupt cancellation of ABC’s hit TV show Roseanne because
of a racist tweet by the show’s star Roseanne Barr. In a column titled “With Roseanne Barr gone, will
the US working-class be erased from TV?”, Joan Williams argues that the left
should finally start to listen to the white working class. The cancellation
“deprived American television of one of the only sympathetic depictions of
white working-class life in the past half century – in other words, since
television began,” she writes.
Williams unambiguously
supports the exclusion of Barr on account of her racist tweets – but she adds:
“Virtually all Americans born in the 1940s earned more than their parents;
today, it’s less than half. The rust belt revolt that brought both Brexit and
Trump reflects rotting factories, dying towns, and a half century of empty
promises. Those left behind are very, very angry; Trump is their middle finger.
The more he outrages coastal elites, the more his followers gloat they got our
goat. Finally, they are being noticed.”
And it is crucial to read
Trump’s tariff war with the closest allies of the US against this background:
in his populist version of class warfare, Trump’s goal is (also) to protect the
American working class (and are metal workers not one of the emblematic figures
of the traditional working class?) from “unfair” European competition, thereby
saving American jobs. This is why all the protests of public officials and
economists in EU, Canada and Mexico, as well as the countermeasures proposed by
them, miss the target: they follow the WTO logic of free international trade,
while only a new left addressing the concerns of all those left behind can
really counter Trump.
At some deep and often
obfuscated level, US neocons perceive the EU as enemy number one. This
perception explodes in its underground obscene double, the extreme right
Christian fundamentalist political vision with its obsessive fear of the New
World Order (Obama is in secret collusion with the United Nations;
international forces will intervene in the US and put in concentration camps
all true American patriots – a couple of years ago, there were rumours that
Latin American troops were already in the Midwest plains, building
concentration camps).
Hardline Christian
fundamentalists like Tim LaHaye and his ilk subscribe to this kind of thinking
wholesale. The title of one of LaHaye’s books is The Europa Conspiracy,
and it argues that the true enemies of the US are not Islamist terrorists –
they are merely puppets secretly manipulated by the European secularists, the
true forces of the anti-Christ who want to weaken the US and establish the New
World Order under the domination of the United Nations. In one very strange
way, LaHaye is right: Europe is not just another geopolitical power block, but
a global vision which is ultimately incompatible with strong nation-states.
And this brings us back to
Slovenia where nothing special happened, where the same battle rages as all
around Europe: SDS also portrays itself as the defender of ordinary working
people against the corrupted, non-patriotic elite. The problem of Europe is to
remain faithful to its emancipatory legacy threatened by the conservative,
populist onslaught – and only a renewed left can do it.
In Slovenia, a new party
called simply Levica (Left) also entered parliament this time around with
almost 10 per cent of the votes. This party is for the time being the only
glimmer of hope: it is the only actor on the political stage which escapes the
vicious cycle of the anti-immigrant right and the pseudo-left, these two hands
which, as in Escher’s famous image, permanently draw each other as a scarecrow
to justify their own existence.
Tuesday, June 5, 2018
In Unanimous Vote, House Says No Legal Right to Attack Iran
In a little noticed but
potentially monumental development, the House of Representatives voted
unanimously for an
amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2019 (H.R.
5515) that says no statute authorizes the use of military force against Iran.
The amendment, introduced by
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota), states, “It is the sense of Congress that the
use of the Armed Forces against Iran is not authorized by this Act or any other
Act.”
A bipartisan majority of the
House adopted the National Defense Authorization Act on May 24, with a vote of
351-66. The bill now moves to the Senate.
If the Senate version ultimately
includes the Ellison amendment as well, Congress would send a clear message to
Donald Trump that he has no statutory authority to militarily attack Iran.
This becomes particularly
significant in light of Trump’s May 8 withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.
That withdrawal was followed by a long
list of demands by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, which could set the
stage for a US attack on Iran.
Co-sponsors of the Ellison
amendment include Reps. Barbara Lee (D-California), Ro Khanna (D-California),
Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois), Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts) and Walter Jones
(R-North Carolina).
“The unanimous passage of this
bipartisan amendment is a strong and timely counter to the Trump
administration’s withdrawal from the Iran deal and its increasingly hostile
rhetoric,” Ellison said in a press
release. “This amendment sends a powerful message that the American people
and Members of Congress do not want a war with Iran. Today, Congress acted to
reclaim its authority over the use of military force.”
Likewise, Khanna stated, “The
War Powers Act and Constitution is clear that our country’s military action
must first always be authorized by Congress. A war with Iran would be
unconstitutional and costly.”
McGovern concurred, stating,
“Congress is sending a clear message that President Trump does not have the
authority to go to war with Iran. With President Trump’s reckless violation of
the Iran Deal and failure to get Congressional approval for military strikes on
Syria, there’s never been a more important time for Congress to reassert its
authority. It’s long past time to end the White House’s blank check and the
passage of this amendment is a strong start.”
Moreover, the Constitution
only grants Congress the power
to declare war. And the War Powers Resolution allows the president to
introduce US Armed Forces into hostilities or imminent hostilities only after
Congress has declared war, or in “a national emergency created by attack upon
the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces,” or
when there is “specific statutory authorization.”
But even if the Ellison
amendment survives the Senate and becomes part of the National Defense Authorization
Act, Trump would likely violate it. He could target Iranian individuals as
“suspected terrorists” on his global battlefield and/or attack them in Iran
with military force under his new targeted
killing rules.
Unilateral Sanctions Against
Iran Are Illegal
Although the Ellison amendment
states that no statute authorizes the use of US armed forces in Iran, it does
not prohibit the expenditure of money to attack Iran. Nor does it proscribe the
use of sanctions against Iran.
In fact, other amendments the
House adopted mandate the imposition of sanctions against Iran.
An amendment introduced by
Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Illinois) reflects the sense of Congress that “the
ballistic missile program of Iran represents a serious threat to allies of the
United States in the Middle East and Europe, members of the Armed Forces
deployed in those regions, and ultimately the United States.”
The Roskam amendment then
states the US government “should impose tough primary and secondary sanctions
against any sector of the economy of Iran or any Iranian person that directly
or indirectly supports the ballistic missile program of Iran as well as any
foreign person or financial institution that engages in transactions or trade
that support that program.”
And the House mandated the
imposition of sanctions against people connected to named groups in Iran that
“commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism,” in an amendment introduced
by Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas).
When Trump announced
his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, he also reinstated US
nuclear sanctions and “the highest level” of economic restrictions on Iran.
Those sanctions could remove
over one million barrels of Iran’s oil from the global market.
The unilateral imposition of
sanctions by the United States, without United Nations Security Council
approval, violates the UN Charter. Article 41 empowers the Council, and only
the Council, to impose and approve the use of sanctions.
The other parties to the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action, the formal name for the Iran deal, oppose ending
it. Known as P5+1, they include the permanent members of the Security Council —
the US, the United Kingdom, Russia, France and China — plus Germany, as well as
the European Union.
At a minimum, France, Italy,
Germany and the United Kingdom are not
likely to cooperate with the US’s re-imposition of sanctions.
Trump Administration Gunning
for War on Iran and Regime Change
Before Trump withdrew from
the Iran nuclear agreement, Iran was complying
with its obligations under the pact.
Once Trump named John
Bolton, notorious
for advocating regime changein Iran, as national security adviser, it was a
foregone conclusion the United States would pull out of the pact.
Pompeo also supported
renunciation of the deal. His over-the-top demands on Iran include the
cessation of all enrichment of uranium, even for peaceful purposes (which is
permitted by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty).
“Taken together, the demands
would constitute a wholesale transformation by Iran’s government, and they
hardened the perception that what Trump’s administration really seeks is a
change in the Iranian regime,” the
Associated Press reported.
Jake Sullivan, who served in
the Obama administration and was Hillary Clinton’s lead foreign policy advisor
during the presidential campaign, said of
the Pompeo demands, “They set the bar at a place they know the Iranians can
never accept.”
Ellie Geranmayeh, a fellow at
the European Council on Foreign Relations, called the demands “conditions
of surrender.”
Meanwhile, it is unclear how
long it will take to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the National
Defense Authorization Act. Constituents who become aware of the risk of a US
attack on Iran will invariably lobby their senators to include an admonition
comparable to the House’s Ellison amendment.
Communist Last Supper
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/communist-last-supper-leonardo-digenio.html
Communist Last Supper is a painting by Leonardo Digenio which was uploaded on December 24th, 2015.
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