Syria: Where is the Alternative Narrative?

Let me first state that I have never been an admirer of the Syrian governments of the Assads, father and son, just as I was never an admirer of Saddam Hussein. I do consider the leftwing of the Ba'ath Party, which both of them hijacked, to have been a very progressive, secular movement in the Arab world, and the secularism and freedom for women which predominated in both countries is a direct result. All of that said, I have to point out the almost total censorship in the news we are getting in the USA about Syria. When I talk to friends in Beirut and East Jerusalem and when I read news reports from India and Russia, there is another narrative which almost never appears in the USA, not even on KPFA or Democracy Now! This morning I listened to an old friend Reese Erlich on KPFA, and he dismissed this narrative in what I consider a naive and shallow way. The only exception is the reporting of Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, particularly his June article on Iran. He asserted at that time--and I also heard it on Democracy Now!--that the real danger in the region is not Iran but Saudi Arabia, which is flooding Syria and Lebanon with money and arms going to jihadist extremists. The monolithic narrative that we hear in the USA is that there is a democratic movement fighting the government in Syria. Reese at least acknowledged that the opposition is armed and killing soldiers and police, but he dismisses any notion of foreign invovement. Certainly, there is a genuine democracy movement in Syria and certainly the government has used terrible repression against it. But the alternative narrative is that there is also a foreign-subsidized heavily armed jihadist opposition which is not only fighting the government but other Syrians. The censorship of this narrative from nearly all USA reporting is highly disturbing to me. It smacks of manipulation of the news at very high levels. But the absence of mention of this narrative by reporters like Reese and Amy Goodman is doubly disturbing. Only Seymour Hersh covers it and only as a sidebar on the story about the nonexistent nuclear weapons development program in Iran. None of us knows exactly what is happening in Syria, but that makes it even more irresponsible to not at least mention this alternative narrative in reporting. There is a huge Saudi-funded, jihadist party in Lebanon, too, and who is talking about that? It's time to focus our attention on what is occurring in the world without ideological blinders imposed by the US government and its allies.

Capitalism and Greed

My nephew and I had a disagreement about what's wrong. I say capitalism and he says greedy capitalists. He argues that capitalism is not the problem that it has produced many great innovations and that the problem is that we just need to reign in the greed of some capitalists. I agree that much progress was made over the feudal era, but I disagree about greed. Capitalism is a system based on greed, and without greed it cannot function. The basic assumption in capitalist theory is that when people act in their own self-interest, the market will balance it all out for the best outcome for all. I have argued that that assumption is fundamentally false in another blog. The problem, however, is that those who define their self-interest as greed are those rewarded by capitalism. They amass the wealth and thus the power. The ultimate pursuit of greed under capital is finance capital, the making of profit without producing anything. It's natural that the greedy would take over finance capital. Where else can a person earn billions of dollars without having to produce something that contributes to the well-being of society? Thus, capitalism rewards the greedy in direct proportion to their greed. You cannot eliminate greed without moving on past capitalism. You have to change the rules which determine who is rewarded and how. You cannot just reform capitalism with careful regulation. You would have to regulate it to the point that it is not capitalism any more. This thought is not original with me. Lenin wrote something similar long ago. He was asked why we could not reform capitalist society to favor those who work, to provide benefits to the many, etc. He answered that we could do that, but then it would not be capitalism any more. We need to recognize that in order to appreciate what needs to change to make this world a better place to live in.

Occupy Wall Street

This movement is the most hopeful sign any of us have seen in the USA since the Wisconsin revolt. It has the potential to unite very disparate groups because it focuses on the deepest roots of most of our social and economic problems, finance capital. It is spreading rapidly across the USA and internationally. Nobody knows what will come of it, but at least it is pointed in the right direction. I hope it will expose Barack Obama as the servant of finance capital that he is, part of the problem and not part of the solution.

Thoughts on 9-11

I did not want to write this yesterday because September 11 was my dad's birthday.

The attack on the World Trade Center was clearly a terrible crime which slaughtered more than 3,000 people. The US response to it was an even worse crime against humanity, and the number of its victims is still uncounted and may never be counted. The US response, which was carpet bombing of Afghanistan and then a fullscale invasion which continues today and then the invasion of Iraq, which had zero connection to the attack, is unmeasured, totally inappropriate, immoral, unwise, stupid, and a whole list of other adjectives. It involved unnumbered war crimes sanctioned by the highest political leadership in the United States, who continue to be unprosecuted because of the stupidity and weakness of the current administration, which continues many of the same crimes. US interests, as defined by the US government (not by me), are bound to lose in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq is expected to descend into another fierce civil war soon, and one or another group of extremist warlords will end up in power in Afghanistan. One side effect of all this is the long-term destruction of the US economy, compounded by irresponsible tax cuts for corporations and the rich and many other policies implemented by finance capital. We wonder at the suicide of lemmings diving over cliffs, but our society, led by finance capitalists, is making a similar plunge to destroy ourselves.

Everything connects together: insane wars, global warming, export of good jobs, the destruction of manufacturing in the USA, the selling of American democracy to lobbyists and big money, and a long list that I don't need to enumerate. The hallmark of our species has always been our ability to change our environment to enhance our prospects for survival. Whether we are losing that ability will be shown by how we handle these crises. To date, things do not look very good.

Thoughts on bin Laden

I posted this to Facebook but figured it belongs here, too.

I've been thinking about what I really think about the killing of bin Laden and the media, government, and public reaction. It boils down to this. It was a tawdry and dishonorable episode in which a group of state terrorists killed a terrorist without a state. My feeling is: a plague on both their houses but let's be honest. The state terrorists kill far more innocents than do the others whom they inspire.

So, the bottom line is this: I feel no sadness that bin Laden is dead, but his death does not in any way address the root problems of US wars for oil and domination, of Israeli apartheid and its brutal aggression and occupation, and a whole litany of injustices based on monumental greed and stupidity. Injustice breeds resistance, whether it is nonviolent in Egypt or Tunisia or misguided terrorism like bin Laden. Let the focus remain on the roots and not only on a single twig.

The Myth of the Market

I want to begin by explaining that I studied chemistry at university and received a doctorate (Ph.D.). I had to study physics and physical chemistry. In physical chemistry, you learn about canonical arrays, which are used to derive the behavior of gas molecules in very large numbers. I state that because for centuries the theory of the market has been based on similar arguments. I want to explode those arguments here. First of all and most important are two assumptions. The first is that all molecules / human actors are identical and the second is that they behave in essentially random ways. Both of these are true for gas molecules at the canonical level (very large numbers); neither is true for markets. Human wealth is certainly not identical, and human behavior is not random, even among large numbers of humans. We act on beliefs and information and, if those bear any relationship to reality, in our own self interest. Even when the idea of markets was first formulated, there was lots of inequality and misdirection. Today, the inequalities are astronomical (billionaires and paupers) and control over the information on which people act is also tightly sequestered and manipulated. Therefore, I assert that the market has never been a mechanism for fairly resolving economic needs. It has always favored the rich over the poor, and since the rich control the institutions which evaluate markets, it is in their interests to portray it as fair. These arguments have only intensified in their relevance in the 21st century. Huge corporations act on behalf of the wealthy to increase their wealth at the expense of the vast majority. This is like molecules of grains of sand along with cannonballs. The cannonballs roll where they will and carve deep furrows in the sand. Only when the grains of sand organize themselves to act together is there any hope of fairness. In order to move forward, the notion of the market has to be abandoned.

Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia: The Integument Bursts Asunder

"The integument bursts asunder" were the words of Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto.
He used them to describe the revolutionary ferment in mid 19th century Europe. They are
certainly appropriate to describe the revolutionary situations in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt
today. Nobody can say where these revolts will go, but they reveal elements of a revolutionary
situation. In general, a revolutionary situation exists when the people are unwilling to continue with things
the way they are and the old order is unable to continue. That is certainly the case. The third
element is whether there is conscious leadership able to lead to a new desired state; that is
often lacking and may or may not be present in these countries. Still, if any fundamental
changes result from this revolutionary ferment, they could effect profound shifts in the
region and the world. Egypt, in particular, has been a keystone of US domination,
and a genuinely national new regime would be unlikely to play that role. The important
thing to realize is that this is a revolution "from below." Even Nasser's overthrow of
the monarchy in 1952 was from above. There was a mass uprising in 1967 to demand
that Nasser stay in power, but the demands today appear to be much more far-reaching.
The world certainly needs deep and profound changes; we can only hope that these are
signs that it is coming.

Palestinian/Israeli Negotiations and the Crisis in Lebanon

Al Jazeera has leaked documentation on the negotiations between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Israeli government. It seems that the PA offered Israel a chunk of east Jerusalem along with the token repatriation of a small number of refugees, perhaps in exchange for other territory. It also seems that Israel informed the PA before they launched their assault on Gaza in 2009. These revelations should further discredit the PA with the Palestinian people. It is very unfortunate that no real left alternative exists since the Palestinian left mostly self-destructed after the Oslo accords. So, Hamas will likely be further strengthened by this information. The leaked documents also make clear that the Israeli govenment rejected even this demeaning Palestinian offer, which proves, once again, that Israel never had any genuine interest in peace or negotiations.

In Lebanon, Najib Mikati has been chosen as prime minister instead of former prime minister Hariri. Sunnis are demonstrating and striking. The US government says it will no longer support the Lebanese army if Hezbolleh controls the Lebanese government. Lebanese see that as a joke since the US government had not been providing such support. But the real joke is the US government's love/hate relationship with democracy. They love to talk about it, but they reject it when democracy produces results they don't like, whether it is the election of Hamas in Gaza or Hezbolleh's political gains in Lebanon.