Friday, January 4, 2019
Yanis Varoufakis | The Euro Has Never Been More Problematic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhSg9X3q2gc
Silence follows Trump attorney’s statement that Julian Assange did nothing “wrong”
By James Cogan
4 January 2019
During a December 30 interview
on the US cable television talk show “Fox and Friends,” Rudy Giuliani, the
right-wing Republican former mayor of New York and now attorney for President
Donald Trump, blurted out some basic truths about WikiLeaks and its founder and
publisher, Julian Assange.
Giuliani said: “Let’s take the
Pentagon Papers. The Pentagon Papers were stolen property, weren’t they? It was
in the New York Times and the Washington Post. Nobody went to
jail at the New York Times and the Washington Post.”
Giuliani was referring to the
1971 publication of a mass of leaked documents that exposed decades of lies and
crimes committed by successive American governments throughout the Vietnam War.
The Nixon administration went to the US Supreme Court to outlaw the publication
but the court ruled that the US Constitution’s First Amendment, guaranteeing
free speech, protected the media outlets.
Once leaked information was
provided to a “media publication,” Giuliani stated, “they can publish it for
the purpose of informing people.”
He continued: “You can’t put
Assange in a different position. He was a guy who communicated. We may not like
what he communicated, but he was a media facility. He was putting that
information out. Every newspaper and station grabbed it and published it.”
Giuliani was discussing, not
the 2010 leaks published by WikiLeaks exposing US war crimes and diplomatic
intrigues, but the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into alleged
Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Lurid and absurd
allegations have been made that WikiLeaks was part of a nefarious conspiracy
with Russia to assist the Trump campaign.
In July 2016, WikiLeaks
published leaked emails revealing that the Democratic National Committee (DNC)
had sought to undermine self-styled “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders and
ensure that Hillary Clinton was nominated as the Democratic Party’s
presidential candidate.
In October 2016, WikiLeaks
published leaked emails from Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, which
included transcripts of speeches Clinton had given to corporate audiences
during which she pledged support to Wall Street and boasted of her role in
organising the murderous US-led war on Libya in 2011.
WikiLeaks has denied that
Russia was the source of the leaks and, in November 2016, Assange correctly
defended its decision to publish them in the public interest.
Giuliani categorically denied
there was ever any relationship or contact between the Trump campaign and
WikiLeaks. He stated on “Fox and Friends”: “I was with Donald Trump day in and
day out throughout the last four months of the campaign. He was as surprised as
I was about the WikiLeaks disclosures, sometimes surprised to the extent of ‘oh
my God, did they really say that?’ We were wondering if it was true or not.
They never denied it.
“The thing that really got
Hillary is not so much that they were revealed, but that they were true… She
really did completely screw Bernie Sanders. Every bit of that was absolutely
true. Just like the Pentagon Papers put a different view on Vietnam, this put a
different view on Hillary Clinton.”
He continued: “No press person
or person disseminating that, for the purpose of informing, did anything
wrong.”
Nothing Giuliani said is new
or even controversial. Assange is a journalist and editor. WikiLeaks is a media
organisation. When it was entrusted by whistleblowers with leaked information,
WikiLeaks published it “for the purpose of informing people.” Assange has
committed no crime. The attempts under Obama’s administration and now Trump’s
to have him extradited to the US to stand trial on charges of espionage or
conspiracy constitute a fundamental attack on freedom of speech and an
independent and critical media.
Since 2010, when the American
state apparatus launched its vendetta, every genuine defender of democratic
rights has been obliged, as a matter of political principle, to stand behind
Assange and WikiLeaks, and the fight for his unconditional protection from
US-led persecution.
Indeed, from this standpoint,
the most noteworthy aspect of Giuliani’s statements is that they were made by a
ruthless representative of the American financial and corporate elite, and on
Fox News, the station that in 2010 broadcast calls for Assange to be
assassinated.
Giuliani, a fervent supporter
of Trump’s fascistic “America First” agenda of war with China and the
destruction of workers’ rights and civil liberties in the US itself, does not
have the slightest concern for freedom of speech or democracy. His only motive
in telling the truth about Assange and WikiLeaks is to rebut the claims
circulating around the Mueller investigation and the possible use of
accusations of collusion with Russia to impeach the president and replace him
with Vice President Mike Pence.
A wing of the American ruling
class, represented by the Democratic Party, factions of the Republican Party
and sections of the military-intelligence apparatus, are outraged by Trump’s
seeming lack of concern with confronting Russia.
Even before he was
inaugurated, that wing of the establishment demanded that Trump escalate a
confrontational policy against Moscow, from the standpoint that conflict with
China could be best pursued if Beijing were denied any ability to seek
assistance from Russia. They believe Pence, a Christian fundamentalist and
extreme right-wing ideologue, would be a more malleable figure than the erratic
and unstable billionaire real estate speculator.
On a world scale, the
allegations of Russian “interference” have been used as the pretext for a
massive campaign of censorship, directed by companies such as Google and
Facebook against, above all, left-wing, anti-imperialist and anti-war websites
and social media postings.
The American state apparatus
also has used them to bully the Ecuadorian government, which in 2012 provided
Assange with asylum in its London embassy, to turn against the WikiLeaks
publisher. In April 2017, Mike Pompeo, then CIA director and now Trump’s
secretary of state, declared—after WikiLeaks published the explosive “Vault 7”
leaks exposing criminal CIA operations—that the media organisation would be
treated as a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state
actors such as Russia.”
In March 2018, on the dictates
of Washington, Ecuador cut off Assange’s right to communicate with the outside
world and has taken other punitive measures to try and pressure him to leave
the embassy and hand himself over to British police to face imprisonment and
extradition to the US.
A multitude of media
publications, political parties and trade unions—from the New York Times and
the Guardian, to the Australian Labor Party and an array of pseudo-left
organisations internationally—refuse to defend Assange and WikiLeaks because
they support the plans of US imperialism for confrontation and war with Russia
and China. They are hostile to the democratic rights of the working class
because they represent the capitalist elite and upper middle-class layers,
whose privileges and positions depend on the historically unprecedented levels
of social inequality and the concentration of global wealth in the hands of a
parasitic financial oligarchy centred in the US and other imperialist
countries.
Predictably, not a word about
Giuliani’s statements has been said by the political and media establishment in
the US, Europe or Australia.
The silence in Australia is of
particular significance. Assange is an Australian citizen. In the face of
persecution by the governments of other states, he has always been entitled to,
but denied, the full diplomatic, legal and political support of the Australian
government.
The categorical statement by a
figure as repelling as Giuliani, that there are no grounds to prosecute
Assange, serves only to expose the perfidy of the current Liberal-National
Party Coalition government, the Labor Party, the Greens, as well as the media,
the trade unions and civil liberties organisations. Their refusal to defend
Assange testifies to the utter rot of democracy in the country.
The Socialist Equality Party
(SEP) in Australia announced last month that it will organise and seek the
broadest support for political demonstrations in Sydney on March 3 and
Melbourne on March 10.
The rallies will demand that
the Australian government end its collaboration with the US-led persecution of
Assange and immediately intervene, using the full scope of its diplomatic and
legal powers, to insist that the British government allow the WikiLeaks
publisher to leave the Ecuadorian embassy and unconditionally return to
Australia, if he chooses to do so. Assange must be given a blanket guarantee
that any request by the Trump administration to extradite him from Australia to
the US would be rejected out of hand.
In the forthcoming Australian
election, the SEP will raise these demands as one of the main policies of its
candidates for both upper- and lower-house seats in parliament. It will conduct
the widest campaign in the working class and among youth, in Australia and
internationally, to compel the Australian government to act to secure the
freedom of Julian Assange.
The global slowdown: US trade war comes home
4 January 2019
The term “decoupling,”
referring to the severing of trade ties between the United States and China,
has, to quote one commentator, become the “talk of Washington.” The two
countries are embroiled in what has been widely described as a “new cold war,”
in which, in the words of former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, an “iron
curtain” has descended over the Pacific.
In place of what the Washington
Post called a “bipartisan consensus in favor of broad engagement with
China,” substantial sections of the American foreign policy establishment are
supporting the Trump administration’s policy of disentangling the myriad
economic links between the world’s two largest economies amid the growth of
protectionism and military conflict.
But Thursday’s events have
given a hint of what such a “decoupling” will look like in the 21st century
globalized economy. Amid bear markets in Germany, China and Japan, a relentless
fall in commodity prices, signs of slumping consumer spending and mounting
layoffs and plant closures in auto and other industries, the American ruling
class fears that the global slowdown is spreading to the United States.
For the first time in 16
years, Apple Inc, the world’s most profitable company, was forced to cut its
sales projections for the coming year, citing the deepening economic slump in
China and attributing it to the US trade war.
The announcement prompted a
660-point selloff on the Dow. After closing the worst December since the 1930s,
the US markets have had their poorest two-day start for a new trading year
since the collapse of the dot.com bubble.
Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote,
“While we anticipated some challenges in key emerging markets, we did not
foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in greater
China.” He continued, “We believe the economic environment in China has been
further impacted by rising trade tensions with the United States.”
A trader cited by the Wall
Street Journal was more direct: “All of it is coming home to roost more
directly in the United
States… the slowdown is here
and happening.”
The speed of the reversal in
sentiment is striking. “Just weeks after Federal Reserve officials penciled in
two interest rate increases in 2019, half of investors now expect the central
bank to cut rates this year, up from about 10 percent a day earlier,” wrote
the Wall Street Journal.
The same day as Apple’s
warnings, the ISM manufacturing index for the US posted its biggest one-month
fall in factory activity since the 2008 financial crisis.
These figures have prompted
warnings that US growth will not merely see a gradual slowdown over the course
of several years, as is broadly predicted by global institutions, but could
follow China and other developing countries into a sharp and deep recession.
Such a recession, international in scope and intensified by trade war, could
spark a global financial crisis on the scale of, or larger than, the 2008
crash.
This is because none of the
fundamental causes of the 2008 crisis have been addressed. The holes in the
banks’ balance sheets were simply filled with money spit out by central banks
through quantitative easing and ultra-low interest rates. The economic
“recovery” since 2008 has been financed by an expansion of global debt, which,
according to figures published by the International Monetary Fund last month,
has hit an all-time high of $184 trillion.
Meanwhile, events like
Malaysia’s 1MDB scam, in which global financial institutions such as Goldman
Sachs extracted hundreds of millions of dollars in fees to facilitate the theft
of billions of dollars, show that the types of large-scale fraud that led to
the 2008 financial crisis remain prevalent.
But unlike the 2008 crisis, in
which the major economies vowed to cooperate and pledged to avoid trade war,
the United States has initiated trade war measures against not just China, but
also against dozens of other countries, including its European NATO allies. As
in the 1930s, these trade conflicts have the potential of magnifying the scale
of a global recession.
The growth of “great power
competition,” and the resulting trade and military conflicts do not arise from
the mind of US President Donald Trump. Rather, they represent the assertion of
a fundamental and insoluble contradiction of capitalism: the conflict between
global production and the nation-state system. That is why, despite the
unprecedented worldwide integration of economic life, communications and
scientific research, the ruling elites all over the world are pursuing
nationalist trade policies and military rearmament.
Writing just months after the
collapse of Lehman Brothers, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David
North observed:
“The most essential feature of a historically significant crisis is that it
leads to a situation where the major class forces within the affected country
(and countries) are compelled to formulate and adopt an independent position in
relationship to the crisis.”
The ruling elites in the
United States and all over the world responded to the 2008 financial crash by
seeking to make the working class bear the full brunt of the crisis. The
investments of the financial oligarchy were made whole, then doubled and
tripled, as a result of bank bailouts, deregulation and tax cuts.
Meanwhile, the working class
faced a decade of stagnant and declining wages, spearheaded by the expansion of
low-wage production at the US automakers as part of their restructuring carried
out by the Obama administration and its trade union partners.
With the eruption of a new
global recession, the ruling elite will operate on the basis of the same
playbook—intensifying the ruthless policy of austerity it has pursued since the
financial crisis.
But the past decade has not
been in vain. The year 2018 saw a substantial growth of the class struggle,
including a wave of strikes and protests by teachers in the United States,
strikes by delivery and logistics workers, airline pilots, auto workers and others
on virtually every continent, and explosive protests by workers from Iran to
Latin America. The year concluded with the eruption of mass anti-austerity
protests in France, independent of the trade unions, and moves to form
rank-and-file committees by auto workers in the United States and plantation
workers in Sri Lanka.
The ruling elites, with their
legitimization of trade war and “great power conflict” and their efforts to
rehabilitate the fascist legacy of the 1930s, are paving the way for a repeat of
all the horrors that characterized that decade.
Only the independent
revolutionary movement of the working class offers humanity a way forward out
of this morass. In the face of renewed attacks by the ruling elite, workers all
over the world must enter into struggle under the banner of socialist
internationalism, with the aim of overthrowing the capitalist system and
securing a peaceful and prosperous socialist future.
Andre Damon
Thursday, January 3, 2019
Apparently, clubs now need to hire consent guardians – clearly we've misunderstood human sexuality
The conservative right often
attributes the excesses of political correctness to the destructive influence
of cultural Marxism which tries to undermine the moral foundations of the
Western way of life.
But if we take a closer look
at these “excesses,” we can see that they are, in fact, signs of the unbridled
reign of what, decades ago, political theorist Fredric Jameson called cultural
capitalism: a new stage of capitalism in which culture no longer functions as a
domain of ideological superstructure elevated above economy but becomes a key
ingredient of the ever-expanding reproduction of capital.
One of the clearest imaginable
examples of cultural capitalism is surely the commodification of our intimate
life. This is a permanent feature of a capitalist society, but in the last
decades it’s reached a new level. Just think about how our search for sexual
partners and for good sexual performance rely on dating agencies or websites,
medical and psychological help, and so on.
House of Yes, in Brooklyn, New
York, adds a new twist to this game: the intricate problem of how to verify
consent in a sexual interplay is resolved by the presence of a hired
controlling agent. The club is a hedonistic playground where “anything
goes”. Time Out voted it as the second
best thing to do in the world and The Sun described as “the
wildest night club on the planet”.
One of its most popular
features is the introduction of “consenticorns”, people whose job it is to
monitor the goings on and ensure no one’s consent is being violated. In the
House of Yes, customers can do anything from naked hot tubs to drag wrestling,
but they have to adhere to a strict consent policy, which is ultimately
enforced by “consenticorns,” the “consent guardians” who wear light-up unicorn
horns.
They observe interactions and
look for signs that someone might feel unsafe. In most cases, making eye
contact is enough to prevent trouble. Sometimes, a more direct intervention is
needed: the consenticorn dances up to the couple and inquires if there are any
problems. If it is necessary, the person responsible for the trouble is asked
to leave.
The ideal that motivates the
House of Yes was formulated by the nightlife impresario Anya Sapozhnikova,
who celebrated there her 32nd birthday with a massive party. In a short
speech, she asserted that the true goal of the House of Yes is to make
consenticorns obsolete: “Imagine a world where sexuality is celebrated.
Pretend that equality and inclusivity are mainstream. Envision a place where
people dance together instead of ripping each other apart…” This seems to have
gone down well in liberal circles. Arwa Mahdawi even wrote
in The Guardian that: “House of Yes’s success is an important
reminder that the stricter we are about consent, the more fun everyone can
have.”
I must confess that I don’t
want even to imagine such a place. Remember we are talking about having
(intimate, sexualised) fun, and the implication of Mahdawi’s claim is that, in
today’s society, the consent required for pure fun can only be enforced through
tight control – the stricter the control over us is, the more fun everyone can
have.
The majority of us still
prefer intimate sexual interplay, while the House of Yes practices something
more akin to group sex. So, to let ourselves go to an evil imagination, will
somebody propose also a consenticorn to observe and control a single couple’s
sexual interactions?
Perhaps the partisans of the
House of Yes imagine a future state where consenticorns will no longer be
needed since individuals will leave behind their egotist aggressivity. However,
if we learned anything from psychoanalysis it is that masochism and sadism,
pleasure and pain in all its diverse forms, is an irreducible ingredient of our
sexual lives, not just a secondary effect of social domination perturbing pure
consensual joy. We would thus need consenticorns able to distinguish consensual
sadomasochism from the exploitative one – an impossible task.
But there is an even greater
complication that emerges here. The lesson of psychoanalysis is that in
exhibitionism – a third witness – can be a condition of one’s pleasure. So what
if one needs a consenticorn to fully enjoy a sexual experience? And what if one
wants to involve a consenticorn into the erotic interplay with a partner,
either as a witness who scolds or as another active participant? The basic
point of psychoanalysis is that a controlling agent who exerts control and
oppression can become itself a source of pleasure. In short, the entire vision
of the House of Yes is based on the total ignorance of what we learned from
Freud.
The idea of consenticorns is
problematic for two interconnected reasons. First, it offers to resolve the
problem of non-consensual sex by way of delegating the responsibility to an
external hired controller: I can remain the way I am, the consenticorn will
take care of me if I go too far. And if I do behave properly, it is because I
fear of being caught by the controlling eye. Second, the idea of a consenticorn
totally ignores the perverse implications of its practice, the unpredictable
way the figure of consenticorn itself may get eroticised.
But, maybe, this is our
perverse future. Maybe, our wish to the readers for the New Year should be:
enjoy happy free sex with consenticorns.
Wednesday, January 2, 2019
New Year’s message from Bernie Sanders
https://act.berniesanders.com/signup/signup/
Hello –
Jane and I want to take this
opportunity to wish you and yours a very healthy and happy new year.
It goes without saying that
2019 will be a pivotal and momentous time for our country and the entire
planet. As you know, there is a monumental clash now taking place between two
very different political visions. Not to get you too nervous, but the future of
our country and the world is dependent upon which side wins that struggle.
The bad news is that in the
United States and other parts of the world, the foundations of democracy are
under severe attack as demagogues, supported by billionaire oligarchs, work to
establish authoritarian type regimes. That is true in Russia. That is true in
Saudi Arabia. That is true in the United States. While the very rich get much
richer these demagogues seek to move us toward tribalism and set one group
against another, deflecting attention from the real crises we face.
The good news is that, all
across this country, people are getting politically involved and are fighting
back. They are standing up for economic, political, social and racial justice.
In the last year we saw
courageous teachers, in some of the most conservative states in the country,
win strikes as they fought for adequate funding for education.
We saw low paid workers at
Amazon, Disney and elsewhere undertake successful struggles to raise their
wages to a living wage – at least $15 an hour.
We saw incredibly courageous
young people, who experienced a mass shooting in their school, lead successful
efforts for commonsense gun safety legislation.
We saw diverse communities
stand together in the fight against mass incarceration and for real criminal
justice reform.
We saw tens of thousands of
Americans, from every walk of life, take to the streets and demand that
politicians respond to the global crisis of climate change.
As we enter 2019, it seems to
me that we must mount a two-pronged offensive. First, we must vigorously take
on the lies, bigotry and kleptocratic behavior of the most irresponsible
president in the modern history of our country. In every way possible, we must
stand up to the racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and religious
intolerance of the Trump administration.
But fighting Trump is not
enough.
The truth is that despite
relatively low unemployment, tens of millions of Americans struggle daily to
keep their heads above water economically as the middle class continues to
shrink.
While the rich get richer, 40
million live in poverty, millions of workers are forced to work two or three
jobs to pay the bills, 30 million have no health insurance, one in five cannot
afford their prescription drugs, almost half of older workers have nothing
saved for retirement, young people cannot afford college or leave school deeply
in debt, affordable housing is increasingly scarce, and many seniors cut back
on basic needs as they live on inadequate Social Security checks.
Our job, therefore, is not
only to oppose Trump but to bring forth a progressive and popular agenda that
speaks to the real needs of working people. We must tell Wall Street, the
insurance companies, the drug companies, the fossil fuel industry, the
military-industrial complex, the National Rifle Association and the other
powerful special interests that we will not continue to allow their greed to
destroy this country and our planet.
Politics in a democracy should
not be complicated. Government must work for all of the people, not just the
wealthy and the powerful. As a new House and Senate convene next week, it is
imperative that the American people stand up and demand real solutions to the
major economic, social, racial and environmental crises that we face. In the
richest country in the history of the world, here are some (far from all) of
the issues that I will be focusing on this year. What do you think? How can we
best work together?
Protect American democracy:
Repeal Citizens United, move to public funding of elections and end voter
suppression and gerrymandering. Our goal must be to establish a political
system that has the highest voter turnout in the world and is governed by the
democratic principle of one person - one vote.
Take on the billionaire class:
End oligarchy and the growth of massive income and wealth inequality by
demanding that the wealthy start paying their fair share of taxes. We must
rescind Trump's tax breaks for billionaires and close corporate tax loopholes.
Increase Wages: Raise the
minimum wage to $15 an hour, establish pay equity for women and revitalize the
trade union movement. In the United States, if you work 40 hours a week, you
should not live in poverty.
Make health care a right:
Guarantee health care for everyone through a Medicare-for-all program. We
cannot continue a dysfunctional healthcare system which costs us about twice as
much per capita as any other major country and leaves 30 million uninsured.
Transform our energy system:
Combat the global crisis of climate change which is already causing massive
damage to our planet. In the process, we can create millions of good paying
jobs as we transform our energy system away from fossil fuel and into energy
efficiency and sustainable energy.
Rebuild America: Pass a $1
trillion infrastructure plan. In the United States we must not continue to have
roads, bridges, water systems, rail transport, and airports in disrepair.
Jobs for All: There is an
enormous amount of work to be done throughout our country – from building
affordable housing and schools to caring for our children and the elderly. 75
years ago, FDR talked about the need to guarantee every able-bodied person in
this country a good job as a fundamental right. That was true in 1944. It is
true today.
Quality Education: Make public
colleges and universities tuition free, lower student debt, adequately fund
public education and move to universal childcare. Not so many years ago, the
United States had the best education system in the world. We much regain that
status again.
Retirement Security: Expand
Social Security so that every American can retire with dignity and everyone
with a disability can live with security. Too many of our elderly, disabled and
veterans are living on inadequate incomes. We must do better for those who
built this country.
Women's rights: It is a woman,
not the government, who should control her own body. We must oppose all efforts
to overturn Roe v. Wade, protect Planned Parenthood and oppose restrictive
state laws on abortion.
Justice for All: End mass
incarceration and pass serious criminal justice reform. We must no longer spend
$80 billion a year locking up more people than any other country. We must
invest in education and jobs, not jails and incarceration.
Comprehensive immigration
reform: It is absurd and inhumane that millions of hardworking people, many of
whom have lived in this country for decades, are fearful of deportation. We
must provide legal status to those who are in the DACA program, and a path to
citizenship for the undocumented.
Social Justice: End
discrimination based on race, gender, religion, place of birth or sexual
orientation. Trump cannot be allowed to succeed by dividing us up. We must
stand together as one people.
A new foreign policy: Let us
create a foreign policy based on peace, democracy and human rights. At a time
when we spend more on the military than the next ten countries combined, we
need to take a serious look at reforming the bloated and wasteful $716 billion
annual Pentagon budget.
In the New Year, let us
resolve to fight like we have never fought before for a government, a society
and an economy that works for all of us, not just those on top.
Wishing you a wonderful new
year,
Bernie Sanders
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Monday, December 31, 2018
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