I’ll Tell You Why The 99% Is Not In Revolt

Popular Resistance

October 16, 2019

By Cliff Willmeng

 

 

A Response to Ralph Nader

We do the work.

Well-known political commentator and activist Ralph Nader was recently featured in a Truthdig article titled, “Why Aren’t the 99% Revolting?”. The points made in the article sharply illustrate the scale of growing crisis and conflict across the US and globally. It covered issues as wide-ranging as medical care, climate change, and the titanic disparity of global wealth distribution. It concluded with the following, hollow statement. “I could go on and on. Pick up the pace, readers. Senator Elizabeth Warren has correctly called for “big structural changes.”

Of course, we are all asking ourselves the same thing. How bad does it have to get before widespread rebellion? How many unarmed people of color will be gunned down by police? How many civil rights are going to be stripped? How rich can the elites get off of our labor? How much pain do we all need to feel before we rise up? It’s a natural question to ask by anyone suffering the nature of US capitalism. Unfortunately, Nader’s article rings tone-deaf. Like so many liberal arguments, it places the burden of rebellion on working class people while ignoring the mechanisms that kill revolt wherever and whenever it threatens to spark into life.

Although the elements that prevent substantial rebellion are many, they really boil down to just three. They are the not for profit industry, the leaders of what is currently mislabeled as, “The union movement”, and the Democratic Party. These three elements, all loyal to each other and working in unison, act as the front-line protective mechanism for US capitalism and the political class that serves it.

Many of you will be tempted to flail at this stage of the discussion. Aren’t the Republicans so much worse? Why would anyone attack the forces that are on our side after all they have done, even if they have some traits we may disagree with? The answer is quite simple. These forces are not allied with the types of changes our world desperately needs. They are not there to build, nor even prepare the ground for those types of changes. They act, instead, as the professional brokers of negotiated surrender for communities, workforces, and the environment. They are not building movements; they are preventing them.

What is a Movement?

What is a movement anyway? We hear the term tossed about as often as references to Martin Luther King Jr in every venue from the election of politicians to online petitioning. Although movements have changed the course of US politics for centuries, the essential qualities of movements are nearly forgotten today. In the 50 years that have passed since the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, the definition of “movement” has become the possession of the same institutions that have been most consistent in keeping new movements from forming.

Let’s look at some basic qualities of movements throughout history:

1. Although movements may build their own leadership, they do not look for change to come from above. Instead, movements build politically independent power from below.

2. Movements understand that injustice is not an accidental or coincidental outcome of the political system, but the system working according to design.

3. All movements, recognizing the systemic nature of the problem, will organize ways to break the rules of that system, not simply appeal to it.

4. Through building independent political power and organized mass disobedience, movements force the system to do things it was otherwise unwilling to do.

All of these qualities, synonymous with victories and grassroots power historically, are omitted from the dominant and promoted activism of today. Let’s take a look at who is writing the current narrative.

The Not For Profit Industrial Complex

Alongside any injustice taking place nationally, a cottage industry of professional activists and organizations arises. This occurs as soon as any outrage, protest, or other grassroots formation builds to the point of exerting even a minor amount of uncontrolled political power. As soon as sufficient people and attention are involved, not for profit organizations will be dispatched to commandeer, tame, and control the process. The not for profits are funded by foundations, dark money donors, or otherwise politically connected individuals. It’s easy to see why communities or other efforts fall into their influence. They have staff, networks, and resources that we don’t normally possess at the grassroots level. But in the end, they will lead people into the predictable forms of activism that have been the hallmark of the last 50 years of retreat before Wall Street and Washington D.C. The not for profits help you feel better about negotiating the terms of your defeat. They will not lead an effort, however, that threatens the political and economic elites in any meaningful way.

The Union Leadership

The US working class has been on a downward spiral for generations. Once a power that shook the ground and terrified the rich, and sent their politicians scrambling for ways to save US capitalism, the unions have seen decades of defeated strikes and retreat. Today, despite historic popularity, unions continue to lose strikes and membership, all the while handing hundreds of millions of dollars of hard-earned dues money over to politicians. What happened to the thunderous power of the labor movement? Was this what rank and file workers wanted?

After record-setting strikes in the 1930s and 1940s, US financial interests were able to gain dominant influence within union leadership. Throughout the 1950s revolutionaries were expelled from locals as the labor bureaucracy strengthened its ties and acceptance of the generalized dominance of the rich and powerful. The unions became a force that negotiated better conditions of exploitation and traded their power for a comfortable relationship with the bosses and political class. It became so dominant of a strategy that union officials coined the Orwellian term, the “Team Concept”, which promotes the idea that CEOs and workers can overcome their opposing interests and work together. It has meant ruin for the American working class and an unparalleled race to the bottom for workers globally.

Today the strategies of major victory are all carefully avoided within the union hierarchy. Even when places like Puerto Rico show definitively the effectiveness of efforts like a general strike, any discussion around such an idea is opposed by union leaders in the US. Why? Because it would risk the relationship of the union leaders and the owners of industry and government.

The result is that 13 million union members, who could collectively bring the functioning of the largest capitalist economy to a halt, have been reduced to scripted measures and political spectatorship.

The Democratic Party

All resources, assets, time, labor, money, ideas, organizing and initiative are offered to and consumed by this dominant organization of US business interests. The Democratic Party, we are informed, is the alpha and omega of our efforts to organize for justice. The power of the Democratic Party is so accepted that conventional activism has come to mean a simplified lobby effort aimed to influence their operations or talking points. No movement in history started out with the hope that electing the right politicians would save us. No movement ever exploded onto the world stage with the position that powerful interests were open to moral persuasion. But this is the promoted conclusion and focus leveraged upon all grassroots formulations.

When we accept this conclusion, that we can’t build a movement independent of the Democratic or Republican parties, by what force do we expect that they will change? And, even more, if we accept that the Democratic Party is our only political path forward, what specifically are the costs of maintaining that relationship? Given the nature of the Democratic Party, its owners, its ability to co-opt and control entire populations, what is the opportunity cost to staying within its good graces? It can only be one thing: The disarming of our power and any real threat of revolt. That is the price to ride.

The consequences of this are not academic nor intellectual. Simply look at the state of the environment, the conditions in any major city, the US prison population, the decline of the working class, the wars, systemic racism, poverty and deepening crisis everywhere and you will see the objective consequences of a people outsourcing our power to politicians.

The potential for forceful and effective revolt will be defined by its relationship to these three political forces. The more ties that exist between threatened rebellion and these forces, the more predictable and inert that rebellion will become.

Is There Any Other Way Forward?

Yes. Organized revolt has built occupations, urban insurrections, general strikes, and formed politically-independent organizations throughout history. The labor movement, the abolitionists, and the civil rights struggles all created political power sufficient to throw the system onto its heels and compel deep changes to government and industry. The examples aren’t confined to history either. In places like Kentucky and Virginia, rank and file teachers defied all convention and organized statewide strikes resulting in historic wage increases. Within the last five years, rebellion against racism and police brutality erupted in cities after the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson. Standing Rock saw a historic assembly of First Nations to protect the water of the Missouri River from the Dakota Access Pipeline. Just this year a general strike in Puerto Rico removed Gov. Ricardo Rosselló from power. And let’s not forget that the work stoppage of rank and file airline attendants that defeated Trump’s attempt to keep the US government closed. It took all of 48 hours for that victory.

In every moment throughout history, forces from below threaten to find expression. It means the system has had to develop elaborate mechanisms to keep these forces in check, predictable, and historically inert. The role of regular people then, the working class, has to be to recognize how we are being maneuvered and by whom, and to overcome those mechanisms so we can build something powerful, independent and existentially threatening to the old order. If we can achieve that, revolt is only a moment away. And when it happens, it will rise to the level of the crisis that compelled it.

References:

Ralph Nader: Why Isn’t the 99% Revolting?

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/ralph-nader-why-isnt-the-99-percent-revolting/

 

 

[Cliff Willmeng is a registered nurse, writer, and activist in grassroots labor and environmental struggles. Born in Chicago, Cliff co-founded the Chicago Direct Action Network after participating in the historic uprising against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, 1999. As a union carpenter in UBC Local 1, he was in the leading body of Carpenters For a Rank and File Union which organized successful fights for building trades members across Chicago. After moving to Colorado, Cliff was at the center of the fight against oil and gas drilling known as “fracking”, and helped to found Labor For Standing Rock in 1996. He ran for Boulder County Commissioner as an independent socialist and union official in 2018, receiving nearly 13,000 votes. Cliff lives with his wife and two children today in Minneapolis, Minnesota.]

 

United Against Hate or Hate Being United?

The Wall Will Fall

November 13, 2016

by Cory Morningstar with Forrest Palmer

 

If Americans are seriously “united against hate” – why haven’t they united across the country against the murder/occupation/destabilizations of Haitians, Syrians, Libyans, Iraqis, Yemenis, etc. etc. – all carried out/expanded under the democrats? Trump hates and it’s ugly. Obama and Clinton kill but it’s beautiful and heroic – glazed over and black-washed by the imperial liberal left and black bourgeoisie.

One can say without hesitation that MoveOn.org (co-founder of Avaaz) has absolutely seized the opportunity to drum up democratic support while gathering further aid and loyalty to their own brand. One can say the same for Change.org (a for-profit NGO that collects and sells data via online petitions). Where coloured revolutions financed by the U.S. have always occurred on foreign soil, the current uprising against Trump (sparked by NGOs) is not only unprecedented, but quite different. A coloured revolution is usually carried out to overthrow a leader that is not complying to the dictates of imperialist states to some or full extent. But in this case, both Trump and Clinton (if she had been elected) will fully serve the elites to the extent of their power. Both will serve imperialism as imperialism is the foundation of the “American dream” (in reality a nightmare). Neither will serve the people. Both will accelerate the ongoing destruction of the planet at breakneck speed.

Trump is no Chavez. Trump is appalling. Clinton is no Kirchner. Clinton is a monster. What is fascinating is that there was no public outrage directed at Obama, the likes of which we are now seeing directed at Trump. Nor, if Clinton were elected, would we see any such display of outrage directed toward her. Hatred toward Trump is easily understood. But where was/is the hatred and disdain toward Obama and Clinton? Why is the imperial liberal left blind to the blatant racism and murder carried out by the Democrats under the Obama administration? Is the imperial liberal left simply happy to turn a blind eye if charisma and political correctness can hide the ugly truth, realities and facts? Why do Americans still believe in elections when living under a fascist corporatocracy?

Image: The Slow Burning Fuse

In summary: MoveOn et al created the spark for protests (MoveOn organizing 200 protests across the nation within a 2-hour time frame) – but it was easy to ignite because of the hatred (self-inflicted by the way) of Trump. The liberal masses were the powder keg. Trump was the fuse. The spark was lit during the election season. The lit fuse hit the powder keg on election night. Now, in unison, the NGOs that comprise the non-profit industrial complex reverberate the following messages in the echo-chamber (insert the name of any NGO where the name Avaaz appears.): “To win this fight, we need to be bigger and stronger, to deepen our connection and commitment. So today, we launch our first formal membership drive. Click below to become an Avaaz member, and let’s get serious about $aving the world.”

[“MoveOn.org Civic Action is a 501(c)(4) organization which primarily focuses on nonpartisan education and advocacy on important national issues. MoveOn.org Political Action is a federal political committee which primarily helps members elect candidates who reflect our values through a variety of activities aimed at influencing the outcome of the next election. MoveOn.org Political Action and MoveOn.org Civic Action are separate organizations.”]

 

 

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

[Forrest Palmer is an electrical engineer residing in Texas.  He is a part-time blogger and writer and can be found on Facebook. You may reach him at forrest_palmer@yahoo.com.]

The Predictable and Pathetic End of Sanders’ “Political Revolution”

World Socialist Website

July 13, 2016

by Patrick Martin

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, is confronted on the Westlake Park stage by Mara Jacqueline Willaford over “Black Lives Matter” issues. She and another activist took over the rally, leading to the Senator leaving the stage. Saturday August 8 2015

Bernie Sanders ended his presidential campaign Tuesday, not with a bang but a whimper. The Vermont senator formally endorsed his rival in an undignified prostration before the Democratic Party establishment and Wall Street’s favored presidential candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The unity rally featuring Sanders and Clinton in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, had all the spontaneity and enthusiasm of a going-out-of-business sale. The funereal atmosphere was perhaps fitting, because with the demise of the Sanders campaign, the Democratic Party has demonstrated, for the thousandth time, its historical role as the graveyard of progressive movements and efforts to achieve reform through the capitalist two-party system.

The Sanders campaign has provided a major lesson in politics to millions of young people and workers who rallied to support the Vermont senator because he called himself a “democratic socialist” and because he denounced Wall Street and the domination of US politics by “millionaires and billionaires.”

The mass support for a self-proclaimed socialist shocked the US ruling elite, the Democratic Party establishment, and, no doubt, Sanders himself. It demonstrated that, despite decades of incessant media propaganda against socialism and communism, the experiences of masses of working people and youth are driving them to the left.

This was particularly true among the younger generation. Sanders won by huge margins—70, 80, even 90 percent—among primary and caucus voters under 30 years of age. More than 1.5 million people attended his rallies, with college students and youth of college age predominating.

The Sanders campaign did not create the broad radicalization demonstrated in these figures. The Vermont senator’s bid for the Democratic Party nomination rather served to uncover what was already developing, the product of decades of deepening economic inequality, ceaseless war, attacks on democratic rights and the growing realization that the profit system is leading mankind toward catastrophe.

Once the Democratic primary campaign was fully engaged, however, Sanders’ political task—in the eyes of the US ruling elite—became clear. It was his responsibility to put the genie back into the bottle. He had to deliver his millions of supporters, particularly the youth, to the candidate chosen by the Democratic Party establishment.

In the beginning was the end. From the start of his campaign, Sanders understood the role assigned to him. He abandoned his longstanding pretense to being a political “independent,” and pledged to remain within the framework of the Democratic Party regardless of the outcome of the contest for the nomination.

Throughout the Sanders campaign, the Socialist Equality Party has welcomed the broad shift to the left that it revealed in the thinking of millions of working people and youth, while warning that the Vermont senator would inevitably disappoint his supporters.

We drew attention to two key aspects of the Sanders campaign: his silence on foreign policy and the growing danger of war, and his refusal to criticize the Obama administration for bailing out Wall Street and spearheading the corporate attack on the jobs and living standards of working people, beginning with the 50 percent wage cut imposed on new hires in the auto industry at the insistence of the White House.

Tuesday’s “unity” rally with Hillary Clinton demonstrated both these tendencies. Sanders spoke for 30 minutes without ever mentioning foreign policy, only days after Obama announced an extension of the US military intervention in Afghanistan and approved the dispatch of another 560 US troops to Iraq.

In his tribute to Clinton, Sanders never referred to her four-year tenure as secretary of state, where she was consistently the most hawkish member of the Obama cabinet, instigating the US-NATO war with Libya and advocating even greater US intervention in the Syrian civil war.

As for the Democratic Party’s domestic record, Sanders praised Obama’s actions during the 2008-2009 Wall Street crash. “I thank President Obama and Vice President Biden for their leadership in pulling us out of that terrible recession,” he said, although Obama and Biden saved the bankers and billionaires at the expense of the working class.

Similarly, Sanders hailed Clinton’s agreement on several minor and meaningless changes in the Democratic Party platform, on health care, student debt and the minimum wage, claiming that the result was “the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party.”

Clinton’s own remarks at the rally were equally demagogic and deceptive. She denounced “trickle-down supply-side economics” which were responsible for “30 years of a disastrous Republican philosophy that gave the huge breaks to those at the top.” She conveniently left out that those “30 years” included the eight-year administration of her own husband, who followed the dictates of the financial markets no less slavishly than the Republicans.

She pledged to “open the doors to everyone who shares our progressive values,” although the political careers of both Bill and Hillary Clinton have been based on moving the Democratic Party ever further to the right—abolishing welfare, promoting harsh policing and mass imprisonment, deregulating the banks, and generally distancing the Democrats from any association with policies of liberal reform.

In his remarks Tuesday in New Hampshire, Sanders declared that his campaign would continue, in the form of an all-out effort to elect Hillary Clinton president and elect Democratic majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives. To call such an outcome a “political revolution” is, to say the least, a cynical fraud.

The Democratic Party is, like the Republican Party, an instrument of the financial aristocracy that rules America. While the Republican Party generally expresses the ruling class’s appetite for wealth and power in its most unrestrained form, the Democratic Party has long served as the principal vehicle for neutralizing any challenge to the corporate elite from below.

Despite the best efforts of the media, the Democratic Party and the political establishment as a whole, including Sanders himself, the social and economic opposition that found an initial expression in support for his campaign will not disappear. Whoever wins in November will oversee a society riven by social conflict and will implement deeply unpopular policies, including a sharp expansion of war abroad and the attack on the working class at home.

Workers and young people attracted to the Sanders campaign must draw the necessary conclusions. The Democratic Party cannot be transformed and capitalism cannot be reformed. A leadership must be built to unite the developing struggles of the working class in a revolutionary movement against the corporate and financial elite and the profit system they defend.

 

WATCH: Gaddafi – Distinguished Guest of Columbia University, USA, 2006

A Czech friend, a novelist, told me; “You in the West are disadvantaged. You have your myths about freedom of information, but you have yet to acquire the skill of deciphering: of reading between the lines. One day, you will need it.

That day has come.

John Pilger, Power, propaganda and conscience in the ‘War on Terror’

In this rare 2006 video footage (following article below), distinguished guest, Muammar Gaddafi, speaks via live-stream to students and faculty at Columbia University, USA. He was invited to speak about Libya – which showcased the most democratic system of governance in the world. Today, after the NATO-led invasion, Libya is a western occupied slaughterhouse with Venezuela now in first place for the path towards true democracy.

Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya Was Africa’s Most Prosperous Democracy

Jan 14, 2013

Muammar al-Gaddfi | June 1942 – 20 October 2011

Brave New World

by Garikai Chengu

[Garikai Chengu is a fellow of the Du Bois Institute for African Research at Harvard University. Click here to mail him.]

Contrary to popular belief, Libya , which western media described as “Gaddafi’s military dictatorship” was in actual fact one of the world’s most democratic States.

In 1977 the people of Libya proclaimed the Jamahiriya or “government of the popular masses by themselves and for themselves.” The Jamahiriya was a higher form of direct democracy with ‘the People as President.’ Traditional institutions of government were disbanded and abolished, and power belonged to the people directly through various committees and congresses.

The nation State of Libya was divided into several small communities that were essentially “mini-autonomous States” within a State. These autonomous States had control over their districts and could make a range of decisions including how to allocate oil revenue and budgetary funds. Within these mini autonomous States, the three main bodies of Libya ‘s democracy were Local Committees, People’s Congresses and Executive Revolutionary Councils.

In 2009, Mr. Gaddafi invited the New York Times to Libya to spend two weeks observing the nation’s direct democracy. Even the New York Times, that was always highly critical of Colonel Gaddafi, conceded that in Libya, the intention was that “everyone is involved in every decision…Tens of thousands of people take part in local committee meetings to discuss issues and vote on everything from foreign treaties to building schools.” The purpose of these committee meetings was to build a broad based national consensus.

One step up from the Local Committees were the People’s Congresses. Representatives from all 800 local committees around the country would meet several times a year at People’s Congresses, in Mr. Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte, to pass laws based on what the people said in their local meetings. These congresses had legislative power to write new laws, formulate economic and public policy as well as ratify treaties and agreements.

All Libyans were allowed to take part in local committees meetings and at times Colonel Gaddafi was criticised. In fact, there were numerous occasions when his proposals were rejected by popular vote and the opposite was approved and put forward for legislation.

For instance, on many occasions Mr. Gaddafi proposed the abolition of capital punishment and he pushed for home schooling over traditional schools. However, the People’s Congresses wanted to maintain the death penalty and classic schools, and ultimately the will of the People’s Congresses prevailed. Similarly, in 2009, Colonel Gaddafi put forward a proposal to essentially abolish the central government altogether and give all the oil proceeds directly to each family. The People’s Congresses rejected this idea too.

One step up from the People’s Congresses were the Executive Revolutionary Councils. These Revolutionary Councils were elected by the People’s Congresses and were in charge of implementing policies put forward by the people. Revolutionary Councils were accountable only to ordinary citizens and may have been changed or recalled by them at any time. Consequently, decisions taken by the People’s Congresses and implemented by the Executive Revolutionary Councils reflected the sovereign will of the whole people, and not merely that of any particular class, faction, tribe or individual.

The Libyan direct democracy system utilized the word ‘elevation’ rather than‘election’, and avoided the political campaigning that is a feature of traditional political parties and benefits only the bourgeoisie’s well-heeled and well-to-do.

Unlike in the West, Libyans did not vote once every four years for a President and local parliamentarian who would then make all decisions for them. Ordinary Libyans made decisions regarding foreign, domestic and economic policy themselves.

Several western commentators have rightfully pointed out that the unique Jamahiriya system had certain drawbacks, inter alia, regarding attendance, initiative to speak up, and sufficient supervision. Nevertheless, it is clear that Libya conceptualized sovereignty and democracy in a different and progressive way.

Democracy is not just about elections or political parties. True democracy is also about human rights. During the NATO bombardment of Libya , western media conveniently forgot to mention that the United Nations had just prepared a lengthy dossier praising Mr. Gaddafi’s human rights achievements. The UN report commended Libya for bettering its “legal protections” for citizens, making human rights a “priority,” improving women’s rights, educational opportunities and access to housing. During Mr. Gaddafi’s era housing was considered a human right. Consequently, there was virtually no homelessness or Libyans living under bridges. How many Libyan homes and bridges did NATO destroy?

One area where the United Nations Human Rights Council praised Mr. Gaddafi profusely is women’s rights. Unlike many other nations in the Arab world, women in Libya had the right to education, hold jobs, divorce, hold property and have an income. When Colonel Gaddafi seized power in 1969, few women went to university. Today more than half of Libya ‘s university students are women. One of the first laws Mr. Gaddafi passed in 1970 was an equal pay for equal work law, only a few years after a similar law was passed in the U.S. In fact, Libyan working mothers enjoyed a range of benefits including cash bonuses for children, free day care, free health care centres and retirement at 55.

Democracy is not merely about holding elections simply to choose which particular representatives of the elite class should rule over the masses. True democracy is about democratising the economy and giving economic power to the majority.

Fact is, the west has shown that unfettered free markets and genuinely free elections simply cannot co-exist. Organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. How can capitalism and democracy co-exist if one concentrates wealth and power in the hands of few, and the other seeks to spread power and wealth among many? Mr. Gaddafi’s Jamahiriya however, sought to spread economic power amongst the downtrodden many rather than just the privileged few.

Prior to Colonel Gaddafi, King Idris let Standard Oil essentially write Libya ‘s petroleum laws. Mr. Gaddafi put an end to all of that. Money from oil proceeds was deposited directly into every Libyan citizen’s bank account. One wonders if Exxon Mobil and British Petroleum will continue this practice under the new democratic Libya ?

Democracy is not merely about elections or political parties. True democracy is also about equal opportunity through education and the right to life through access to health care. Therefore, isn’t it ironic that America supposedly bombarded Libya to spread democracy, but increasingly education in America is becoming a privilege not a right and ultimately a debt sentence. If a bright and talented child in the richest nation on earth cannot afford to go to the best schools, society has failed that child. In fact, for young people the world over, education is a passport to freedom. Any nation that makes one pay for such a passport is only free for the rich but not the poor.

Under Mr. Gaddafi, education was a human right and it was free for all Libyans. If a Libyan was unable to find employment after graduation the State would pay that person the average salary of their profession.

For millions of Americans health care is also increasingly becoming a privilege not a right. A recent study by Harvard Medical School estimates that lack of health insurance causes 44,789 excess deaths annually in America . Under Mr. Gaddafi, health care was a human right and it was free for all Libyans. Thus, with regards to health care, education and economic justice, is America in any position to export democracy to Libya or should America have taken a leaf out of Libya ‘s book?

Muammar Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa . However, by the time he was assassinated, Libya was unquestionably Africa ‘s most prosperous nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy in Africa and less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands . Libyans did not only enjoy free health care and free education, they also enjoyed free electricity and interest free loans. The price of petrol was around $0.14 per liter and 40 loaves of bread cost just $0.15. Consequently, the UN designated Libya the 53rd highest in the world in human development.

The fundamental difference between western democratic systems and the Jamahiriya’s direct democracy is that in Libya citizens were given the chance to contribute directly to the decision-making process, not merely through elected representatives. Hence, all Libyans were allowed to voice their views directly – not in one parliament of only a few hundred elite politicians – but in hundreds of committees attended by tens of thousands of ordinary citizens. Far from being a military dictatorship, Libya under Mr. Gaddafi was Africa ‘s most prosperous democracy.

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Video: Uploaded on Oct 27, 2011 | “Muammar Gadhafi in respectful live-streaming dialog with academics at Columbia University March 23, 2006. Here he is praised as a champion of democracy, before the demonization and destruction instigated by a corrupt US, its allies and compliant media.”

Further Resources:

‘Learning to Govern Ourselves‘: Venezuela’s National Network of Commoners: January 2, 2013: http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7583

The Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia – Early digital release [Kindle Edition]: January 29, 2013: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B8C4WTO/ (includes law and framework law) | PAPERBACK: https://www.createspace.com/4151997 | See more: http://www.bolivianlaws.com/2013/01/the-law-of-rights-of-mother-earth-of.html

Great Green Charter Of Human Rights Of The Jamahiriyan Era: http://rcmlibya.wordpress.com/2012/08/12/the-great-green-charter-of-human-rights-of-the-jamahiriyan-era/

Direct Democracy: Understanding Libya’s Political System: http://libyadiary.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/direct-democracy-understanding-libyas-political-system/

Inducing Consent: MoveOn.org

“Another method of inducing consent is purely ideological: duping the masses into believing that the tyrannical ruler is wise, just, and benevolent. La Boétie adds, rulers present a more sophisticated version of such propaganda, for ‘they never undertake an unjust policy, even one of some importance, without prefacing it with some pretty speech concerning public welfare and common good.’ Reinforcing ideological propaganda is deliberate mystification.” – Discourse of Voluntary Servitude

MoveOn.org serves as a front group for the U.S. democratic party. In 2010 MoveOn.org raised $100,000 for Tom Perriello’s re-election campaign. Perriello, with MoveOn, are both key founders of Avaaz. [For more information on MoveOn: http://bit.ly/QdczUV & http://bit.ly/HGgtOn | For more information on Perriello & the disturbing ideology at the helm of Avaaz: http://bit.ly/wfAsQL]

States are more vulnerable than people think. They can collapse in an instant – when consent is withdrawn. — Étienne de La Boétie

FLASHBACK: Silence of the Lambs? Liberal Conspiracy & the Complicity of the Left

September 9, 2009

The Black Commentator

by Larry Pinkney [Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. More on Pinkney can be found below this article.]

 

“No one should be surprised. But everyone should be incensed.”

 

It’s time to stop pretending.

The deafening silence and hypocrisy of liberals and many so-called progressives, and the concomitant complicity by much of the left, in their tacit support for the criminal, smoke & mirror economic policies and ongoing war strategies of the Obama / Biden administration is absolutely indefensible. Moreover, those who espoused so-called “critical support” of the empire’s Barack Obama were intrinsically wrong a year ago and they are wrong now.

There will be no sorely needed single payer universal health care in this nation because fundamentally Barack Obama, and his administration, are pandering to the private profit oriented pharmaceutical and insurance company executives and their avaricious corporate cohorts. The needs and desires of the people be damned, as Barack Obama demonstrated by his reprehensible support for the outrageous bail-out of the gluttonous Wall Street robbers a few short months ago. No one should be surprised, but everyone should be incensed.

It is the very height of absurdity and hypocrisy to be gleeful about the Obama attorney general, Eric Holder’s, announcement that some kind of supposed limited review / investigation will be conducted into U.S. torture interrogations, in view of the fact that Barack Obama has himself has extended and in fact broadened the illegal, amoral, and self-defeating international U.S. program of kidnapping and torture, known as “rendition.” It’s time to stop pretending.

Even as innocent civilians continue to increasingly die, and body bags with the remains of dead soldiers steadily come back from the bloody U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan, nothing has changed. Amazingly, some of the rhetoric is beginning to sound eerily similar to that of the previous administration. Going on a year into the Barack Obama presidency, essentially the same inane and insane justifications and policies of the G.W. Bush administration are being used now by Obama to continue the bloodletting that is being horribly paid for by the peoples of the aforementioned nations, and by the economically poor of this nation, who are the cannon fodder for Obama’s policies of continued U.S. empire abroad.

The corporate media of course continues to play its insidiously important role of distraction, obfuscation, omission, and disinformation. It acts essentially as the propaganda organ of the Obama administration, just as it did for the previous G.W. Bush administration.

One is reminded of the recent arrogantly contemptuous August 18th, 2009, remarks by ABC ‘news’ anchor Charles Gibson about Cindy Sheehan’s valiant planned action at Martha’s Vineyard to draw attention to the rising death tolls due to Barack Obama’s continuing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Gibson whimsically said “Enough already,” inferring that Obama should be unaccountable and politically untouchable, and that Cindy Sheehan should just go away. To Charles Gibson I say: “’Enough already’ of you and the insidious corporate media establishment of talking heads that you are a part of and represent!” Yes, enough already! Enough death, destruction, and subterfuge. Enough empire! →