Saturday, September 17, 2016

Einspruch gegen TTIP, CETA und Kriegspolitik!

Widerstand gegen Imperialismus und Krieg ist nötig und möglich!

Auf zu einer großem Friedensmanifestation am 8. Oktober in Berlin

Berlin am 17. 09. 2016 von Irene Eckert

Aus Protest gegen die geplanten Handelsabkommen TTIP und CETA sind am Samstag in Deutschland mehr als 100.000 Menschen auf die Straße gegangen, laut Polizeiangaben. Die Veranstalter teilten gar mit, bundesweit seien 320.000 Menschen zu den Demonstrationen gekommen. Aufgerufen Zu den Kundgebungen hatte ein breites Bündnis aus Gewerkschaften, Umweltverbänden und kirchlichen Gruppen und das ist gut so. Die bunte Menschenmasse, die etwa in Berlin trotz strömendem Regen die Straßen füllte, verdeutlicht einmal mehr, dass Einigkeit stark macht und dass die Menschen bereit sind zum Widerstand, ganz gegen die Unkenrufe pseudo-friedensbewegter Kräfte, die so tun, als wären die deutschen Bürger eine Herde von Lämmern.

Der Widerstand gegen TTIP und CETA ist aber auch friedenspolitisch von großer Relevanz. Sind diese als Oktroy gedachten Vereinbarungen doch nur die wirtschaftliche Seite der US-gesteuerten Eindämmungsversuche gegen China, Russland und Europa. So absurd sich das zunächst anhören mag. Unter dem verharmlosenden Etikett von Freihandelsabkommen wird Stellung bezogen zu einer Embargo-Politik, die ergänzend zu den nach wie vor bestehenden Sanktionen gegen den Iran, Russland, Syrien, selbstverständlich auch Nordkorea, unliebsamen Konkurrenten der Krieg erklärt wird. Dieser Krieg wird wahnwitziger Weise vom US-Imperium auf allen Ebenen zielgerichtet vorbereitet. Das mediale Trommelfeuer gegen Russland, den angeblichen Aggressor und der NATO-Aufmarsch an seinen Grenzen ist ein anderer Aspekt derselben völkerrechtswidrigen, unheilvollen Politik.

Während Russlands Diplomatie unermüdlich darum bemüht ist, sowohl in Syrien als auch in der Ukraine die gefährliche Eskalationsspirale zu entschärfen und die Außenminister der beiden Großmächte Lavrow und Kerry um die Einhaltung mühsam austarierter Waffenstillstandsabkommen ringen, zielt das Pentagon darauf ab, alle Verhandlungserfolge wieder zu torpedieren.

Dessen ungeachtet hat in New York die UN-Vollversammlung begonnen. Die Vereinten Nationen bleiben der Ort an dem gewaltfreie Konflikt-Lösebemühungen zum Erfolg geführt werden können. Die UN-Charta bietet dafür die richtige Plattform. Wir können gewiss sein, dass die großen anti- hegemonialen Kräfte China, Iran, Russland und ihre Kooperationspartner in Asien, Afrika und Lateinamerika auch in diesem Jahr alle Kräfte darauf richten werden, dem gemeinsam Anti-Terrorkrieg einen neuen Impuls zu verleihen. Sie werden auch mit Vorschlägen nicht sparen, eine multipolare, offene, gerechtere Weltordnung anzuvisieren. Die Umsetzung jedweder Friedensordnung, die wegführen muss vom unipolaren Vorherrschaftsstreben ist aber auf eine wachsame Weltöffentlichkeit angewiesen. Diese Öffentlichkeit muss sich die konstruktiven Vorschläge zu eigen machen, die heilsamen Kräfte in der Welt erkennen und benennen und sich endlich vom alten Feindbilddenken befreien. Auch die Gleichsetzung von Opfer und Aggressor, von Delinquent und Verteidiger muss beendet werden.

Die alte Ordnung ist brüchig geworden. Mit jedem Tag wird sichtbarer, dass die Vereinigten Staaten und ihre sogenannte westliche Wertegemeinschaft ein baufälliges Konstrukt sind. Das Geheimhaltungsgebot, das die Amerikaner den Russen bei der jüngsten Syrienabmachung abverlangen, findet seine Parallele in der Wirtschafts- und Handelspolitik wie sie mit CETA und TTIP verewigt werden soll. Die Verfahrensweise ist undemokratisch, das Ergebnis die endgültige Entrechtung der Völker. Der Hegemon glaubt an seinen Exzeptionalismus und an seine militärische Macht, mit deren Hilfe es ihm schon viel zu lange gelungen ist, dem Rest der Welt seinen Willen aufzudrängen. Diese Ära aber geht zu Ende. Neue Kräfte sind am Erstarken. Chinas Wirtschaftskraft verschafft der volkreichsten Nation der Erde zu einem immer selbstbewussteren Auftreten. Der G20 Gipfel in Hangzhou machte dies jüngst vor aller Welt erneut deutlich. Der Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten musste ohne den üblichen roten Teppich durch die Hintertreppe sein Flugzeug verlassen. Ehrengast der grandiosen Veranstaltung war der russische Präsident Putin. China entsandte kürzlich eine hochrangige Militärdelegation nach Syrien und ist dort zu deutlicherem Engagement bereit.

Die Drohungen der stark angeschlagenen Präsidentschaftskandidatin Hillary Clinton nach ihrer erhofften Nominierung Syrien endgültig zu „befrieden“, laufen ins Leere. Sie wird sie nicht realisieren können. Die mit ihrer Hilfe inthronisierten Vasallen in Kiew werden sich ebenfalls umorientieren müssen. Auch die neuerliche Stütze durch einen wieder einmal ungerechtfertigten IWF-Kredit wird ihnen nicht mehr aus ihrer selbst verschuldeten Misere helfen.

Worauf es ankommt ist, Volkes Stimme überall lauthals und mächtig Gehör zu verschaffen und sich auf die richtigen Verbündeten zu stützen. Mit den Amerikanern im Schlepptau ist kein Staat mehr zu machen. Die beiden Präsidentschaftskandidaten bringen den Zustand dieser einst großen Nation trefflich zum Ausdruck: eine kranke, ältliche Frau, die ihrem Karriereziel alles geopfert hat und die sich völlig in den Fängen des militärisch-industriellen Establishment und von ausländischen Geldgebern wie Saudi-Arabien befindet und ein Multimilliardär und Immobilienhai, der von den eigenen Leuten gehasst und gechasst wird, weil er die NATO für obsolet hält und mit Russland kooperieren will.

Um uns auf eine große Manifestation für den Frieden am 8. Oktober in Berlin gut vorzubereiten,
müssen wir uns diese Zusammenhänge ins Bewusstsein rufen und sie unter die Menschen bringen.

Kooperation statt Konfrontation!

Beendet die unheilvolle Sanktionspolitik!!


Votiert für nationale Souveränität statt Vasallentreue!

The Israel Lobby, the Syrian War and the Meaning of Empire by Andrew Stewart

The Israel Lobby, the Syrian War and the Meaning of Empire
EDITOR'S CHOICE | 17.09.2016 (BLUE AND ITALIC LINES STRESS BY BLOGGER  )

Andrew Stewart is a documentary film maker and reporter who lives outside Providence

There seems to be a series of debates going on in activist circles these days that are inter-connected, the continued plight of Alison Weir and her abysmal treatment by various NGOs  and the issue of who to stand in solidarity with in regards to Syria. Both are informed essentially by one foundational theoretical point, the argument over the role of the neocons in Washington and the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), with a significant group of people seeing everything going on in the region rooted in the PNAC policy suggestions that led us down the road to the war on Iraq and continued the brutalization of the Palestinians under George W. Bush.
I think that, when we get right down to it, the ideas about PNAC are symptomatic of a kind of racism that needs to be squashed and by this I do not mean racism against white people, usually bandied about in the canard of anti-Semitism. No, what I refer to is a fundamental and irreconcilable delusion about America that only Dr. Gerald Horne and a few other scholars like Constance and Ned Sublette have dared challenge.
What defines the debate around Syria right now is whether or not the opposition to Assad, which has been linked to various American NGOs, is a proxy for the United States and whether the events in Syria were part of a typical imperial espionage effort to destabilize the country in the name of American interests. The evidence for this position is very clear, the PNAC agenda included the ouster of the Baath government. However, many argue that the PNAC agenda has ceased to define American policies in the region since Obama took office and such arguments are a mechanical imposition of the opposition to the war on Iraq’s logic onto a conflict that is fundamentally different. Perhaps it bears mentioning that a certain familiarity occurs to me when comparing the debate of support to the Syrian opposition with that of whether the Kosovo Liberation Army was a legitimate opponent of Milosevic.
To my mind, this claim about PNAC is the most mistaken diagnosis of power relations in regards to the Pentagon I have come across in a long time. What we are dealing with is a chicken-and-egg scenario, a question of whether PNAC controlled the Pentagon or whether the Pentagon created PNAC.
To better understand this, we need to go back a century to the start of World War I, the event that caused the entire set of dominoes that have led us here. The question then becomes why did that war happen?
In this regard, the record is monumentally clear. After the unification of Germany and the creation of the first modern welfare state under Bismarck, the German government began to strengthen diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire, including in regards to energy markets. The two governments began to formulate a Berlin to Baghdad railway that would have transported oil between those two cities. This was simply unacceptable to the interconnected financial and energy corporations based in London and on Wall Street. This point is key to understand, finance and oil companies are in reality one large conglomeration and have been at least since the transition from coal to oil in the 19th century, if not earlier. One needs only look to the convoluted and intertwined family trees of John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Nelson W. Aldrich to see how deeply this goes.
It is key to understand these points because it informs the exact reason why the American government first allowed funding of the British and French war efforts before sending troops “over there”. Reams and reams of copy exist now that have obscured this understanding and instead lay the cause of the war on everything from the death of an obscure Austrian princeling to the capitulation of the Second International to colonialism in the Balkans to infinity and beyond. All these events were symptomatic of this fear of the Berlin-Baghdad railway within the oil-finance industrial complex.
The oil-finance industrial complex has had designs on the historic Levant and those same energy markets now for a century. It is a long term goal of the people who own and run America. As such, we need to understand that PNAC was a public relations campaign for this industrial complex that articulated the desires of Wall Street. To suggest that PNAC dictates policy to the Pentagon and not the other way around is based in the delusion that America is a functional parliamentary democracy and not an imperial project whose consolidation dates back to the Civil War. Neocons and neoliberals are press agents disguised as parliamentarians who do the bidding of Wall Street. It perhaps is worth mentioning here also the exact meaning of those words. The neo- prefix does not mean ‘new’ as it does in the word ‘neo-Nazi’. Instead, it designates that politician in question has embraced neoclassical economics, a set of policies and theories that redistributes the wealth of the public sector and 99% of humanity into the coffers of 1% that control the finance capital sector by inverting Keynesian economics. Indeed, while the differences between necons and neoliberals on domestic American social policies were quite profound (abortion, sexual orientation, Affirmative Action), their policies in international colonial policies were identical. In this sense we should identify various implementations of neoliberal policies by foreign politicians as acts of soft-power imperialism driven by Wall Street.
In this sense, Wall Street does want to see the ouster of the Assad government because it would benefit their profits. It is a basic fact that Bashar al-Assad, just like Slobodan Milosevic, is not a saint. For all the copy that can be generated about how the war on Yugoslavia was an imperial conquest (true fact), Milosevic was a former financial official who had enacted austerity programs to appease the WTO/World Bank cartel (also true fact), a point brought home by this fantastic lecture by Michael Parenti from 1999. After the collapse of the USSR, Yugoslavia ceased to be a useful buffer between NATO and the Warsaw Pact and the financial parasites moved in for the kill. They were able to get their man Slobo into power but at a certain point he threw up his hands and said ‘nope, that’s my limit, not going further‘. And at that point it was bombs away. This is roughly akin to the way the US has treated Assad since he took power, he did the West’s dirty work in terms of torture and neoliberal policy implementations up to a certain point and then said ‘enough!‘, at which point our man in Damascus became our enemy.
And in this sense also the Israel lobby is another public relations firm not for the Jewish State but for the oil-finance industrial complex. The Zionist movement was a small, sectarian effort lacking any internal coherency or unity until the British enlisted them as a proxy of colonial efforts in Palestine on behalf of the oil-finance industrial complex after World War I. It was only with backing from finance and the oil companies that Zionism was able to gain any footing in Palestine, their efforts had been futile and scattershot in the approximately two decades prior to the outbreak of the First World War. The suggestion that Zionism has somehow hijacked American imperial policy is ridiculous.
The joke that Israel is the fifty-first state carries in it a kernel of truth, the fact that American federal policies are not overridden by state policies, it is the other way around. Now, has Israel gotten a bit pushier than preferred over the past quarter century? Yes, there is no doubt about that, the Likud party has become so obnoxious that they border on megalomaniacal. But the events leading up to the end of Operation Protective Edge in 2014 are instructive here. After worldwide condemnation for the slaughter, culminating in Ban Ki Moon and other American puppets speaking out, President Obama called Bibi Netanyahu and told him it was time to stop and the slaughter ended immediately. That is significant because it tells us who controls what in the US-Israel relationship. The Israel Lobby is an American public relations firm that uses blackmail to hinder debate within the halls of power. But Obama stopped Protective Edge, meaning he controls Netanyahu.
The idea that Zionism controls America is based in a romantic narrative of governance that is racist. The unstated thesis of the entire argument is “Once upon a time America was a benign, good place and then Zionism hijacked our foreign policy, taking us down a path we would otherwise not have walked.”
But that is pure white supremacist fantasy, a Disney vision of history. Gerald Horne makes clear in his The Counterrevolution of 1776 that America was not a step forward for human decency, instead it was a militant rebellion against the advances of abolition that were taking power in the British Parliament. The commodities targeted by ‘taxation without representation’ were slave-produced ones. The Founders were creating a garrison state to preserve chattel slavery and its political economy. Abraham Lincoln used his American Indian policies to field train the vanguard of American imperial policy that would be implemented in Latin America and the Pacific over the next fifty years. To suggest that Zionism has hijacked American policy is to fundamentally deny that America has been an empire since 1865, something that Gore Vidal spent his entire life disproving through his excellent and quite humorous series of historical novels, Narratives of Empire. In reality, Zionism learned a few things from American imperial policy and implemented mirrors of these policies on the Palestinians. Those who doubt this would do well to engage in an Edward Said-styled literary comparison of any history of the Nakba and Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
I think part of this issue also stems from the fact that some activists still cannot get over the fact that we never had a functional democracy. They yearn for their idealized American democracy while refusing to acknowledge that, if black and brown voices did not matter in 1776, that means the entire edifice of electoral politics and American parliamentarism is a clever and well-funded farce, defined as an ideological state apparatus by the French philosopher and quasi-Maoist Louis Althusser. This apparatus is quite powerful and underwrote why many activists jumped on the Shachtmanite Chairman Bernie Sanders bandwagon in the last eighteen months.
For those of you who have lives, Max Shachtman was the Trotskyist who went in the opposite direction of people like Ernest Mandel or Tariq Ali. While Mandel and others like him said that one should try to reform the Communist bloc, Shachtman said that the Soviet Union was beyond hope, a total failure that was irredeemable. From here he encouraged his disciples Irving Howe, Bayard Rustin, and Michael Harrington to take the skeleton of the old Norman Thomas Socialist Party and create the Democratic Socialists of America, a left caucus of the Democrats that was intended to push the party of American labor to the left and a European-styled model of social democracy while promoting a Cold War liberal foreign policy that was by 1968 to the right of both Noam Chomsky and Walter Cronkite regarding Vietnam. Perhaps it bears mentioning that, even though Harry Clark cites Harrington’s formulation of the word ‘neoconservative’, we should lay a good deal of blame at Harrington’s feet for promulgating hasbara in the 1970’s and ’80’s about how Israel’s Labor Party was a model for the Democrats to emulate despite the fact the highest level of illegal settlement expansion took place under Labor governments.
We should also seriously interrogate the notion of politicians and look to Marx himself for inspiration when dealing with Assad and Putin. He knew exactly what Abraham Lincoln was and was not as a white former railroad lawyer and son-in-law of a slave-owning family. Yet his journalism for Horace Greeley and letters to the president would make you think that the Great Emancipator was a premonition of Lenin. That is not because he was blind to Lincoln’s many massive flaws. Instead it was because he saw the Union Army as an engine of historical progress despite the flaws. Does Vladimir Putin have similar flaws? Yes, many, but his challenge to NATO and the imperial project is objectively a progressive goal and effort despite the flawed engine that delivers it. For those who would rebut me with accounts of Putin’s crimes (??? BLOGGER), which I do not doubt, just take a look at the depravity of Sherman’s march to the sea, a massive moving line of marauders who killed quite a few black and white men and raped quite a few black and white women. Yet Marx called their actions “matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.” This is the difference between English empirical thinking and German dialectical thinking. In the former, the morality of the individual actors is key. In the latter, the outcome of the actions in history, despite the individual actors and their flaws, is all that matters.
The way to control American policy is through direct action politics, or, to quote Howard Zinn, “What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but who is sitting in- and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change.” Electoral politics is able to be used as a tool to further radicalize voters into militant activists. The delusion otherwise dismisses the fact that abolitionists ended slavery and not legislators, who were forced by abolitionists to pass laws.