The Politics of the Academic Elite

Andrew Stewart

April 19, 2015, marked by the publication of Prof. Michael Eric Dyson’s screed against his former mentor, Dr. Cornel West, in The New Republic, is a day that will live in mendacity. Reading the piece, which attacks West for his rejection of Obama and his activism in the name of human rights, was at times painful, enraging, and yet also to be expected. While Dyson has grown in stature as a black intellectual under the glowing auspices of the Obama administration, so too has his conformity. In the era of George W. Bush, he was able to sell himself as a well-spoken academic with a seemingly leftist agenda, using polysyllables and alliteration to stake out a claim for the validity of rap music as an expression of African American angst while denouncing the Republican agenda. But as the Obama administration proved to be hopeless and intent on enacting no change, Dyson was apt to play his cards right and curry favor with the White House.

My own suspicion was piqued several years ago in a debate on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, where Prof. Dyson argued in favor of the travesty that was the late Manning Marable’s biography of Malcolm X, A LIFE OF REINVENTION. While Amiri Baraka slammed the book as an effort to strip Malcolm X of his revolutionary credentials, Dyson accused the late poet of Euro-centrism because he was apt to refer to Marx and Lenin without apology. This newest apologia for neoliberalism at the expense of loyalty confirms these suspicions.

What is so difficult about this issue is removing the personal chaff from the political wheat. Already Dave Zirin at The Nation has written a fantastic rebuttal, CORNEL WEST IS NOT MIKE TYSON, which is worth reading. Zirin is brilliant when he writes:

The word “Palestine” or “Palestinian” does not once make its way into Dyson’s piece. Neither does “Wall Street” or “immigration.” The word “drones” only comes up in a quote attributed to West. We can debate how sincere West’s commitments are to these issues or whether they are a cover for his hurt feelings and heartbreak that Dyson posits is at the root of all the discord. But they should be reckoned with. Does a “black politics” going forward need to have something to say about corporate power, Israeli occupation, immigration, and drone warfare? That’s the unspoken debate in this article, made all the more glaring because Dyson is sympathetic—and far closer to West than President Obama—on many of these questions.

I feel it would be essentially inappropriate to re-tread that which Zirin has so masterfully dissected. However, one element I found intriguing was the discussion of ‘prophethood’ and Dyson’s attempt to portray his former professor as some sort of borderline-lunatic, deluded to the point he sees himself as a prophet. Dyson writes:

West’s lack of understanding of the prophetic tradition is perhaps most evident in his criticism of [Rev. Al] Sharpton and [Rev. Jesse] Jackson. He berates them for their appetite for access to power, their desire for insider status. Even if we concede for the moment that this is true, it isn’t a failure of their prophecy but of West’s ability to distinguish between kinds of prophets. In his 1995 book, THE PREACHER KING, Duke Divinity School Professor Richard Lischer noted that in ancient Israel, the central prophet moved within the power structure, reminding the people of their covenant with God and also consulting kings on military matters and issues of national significance. Peripheral prophets were outsiders who embraced the poor, criticized the monarchy, and opposed war.

While I certainly lack Dyson’s Ph. D. in Religion from Princeton, I do find myself from time to time enjoying the work of Dr. Noam Chomsky, whose Master’s thesis was titled MORPHOPHONEMICS OF MODERN HEBREW. Ergo, Chomsky’s insights on the prophetic tradition of the Jews might be of some interest here. In a 2010 interview with David Samuels of Tablet Magazine, Chomsky had the following insight:

The word “prophet” is a very bad translation of an obscure Hebrew word, navi. Nobody knows what it means. But today they’d be called dissident intellectuals. They were giving geopolitical analysis, arguing that the acts of the rulers were going to destroy society. And they condemned the acts of evil kings. They called for justice and mercy to orphans and widows and so on… [T]he nivi’im were treated the way dissident intellectuals always are. They weren’t praised. They weren’t honored. They were imprisoned like Jeremiah. They were driven into the desert. They were hated. Now at the time, there were intellectuals, “prophets,” who were very well treated. They were the flatterers of the court. Centuries later, they were called “false prophets.”

As I read Dyson’s collection of shibboleths, this insight came to mind and left me bemused as I continued through his blitzkrieg.

The other thread running through this offensive thrust is Dyson’s accusation that West has sacrificed academic credibility in the name of celebrity, saying:

[Former Harvard President Larry] Summers had reprimanded West for his varied side projects… I knew Summers was right when he pointed to West’s diminished scholarly output. It is not only that West’s preoccupations with Obama’s perceived failures distracted him, though that is true; more accurate would be to say that the last several years revealed West’s paucity of serious and fresh intellectual work, a trend far longer in the making. West is still a Man of Ideas, but those ideas today are a vain and unimaginative repackaging of his earlier hits.

This is typical of what has become a standard trope in the hallowed halls of the Ivory Tower. In 1916, Bertrand Russell was expelled from the faculty of Trinity College for pacifist agitation against the First World War. Dr. Norman Finkelstein’s accusations of plagiarism against Harvard Law School Prof. Alan Dershowitz were called ‘unprofessional’ by the tenure committee of DePaul University when he was denied a faculty position. Prof. Steven Salaita’s Tweets about the massacre in Gaza last summer were called anti-Semitic, apparently justifying his termination at the University of Illinois. These days, the standard script for delegitimizing academics who become politically inconvenient begins with attacking professional output. In the case of Dr. West, it seems obvious that his former pupil is not just shaded green with cash windfall, he is also saturated with some serious envy. Dyson spends several lines trashing West for his appearances in films like THE MATRIX RELOADED or a well-intentioned but critically-panned spoken word album.

But Dyson himself is no innocent. A review of his profile on IMDb.com reveals this self-proclaimed ‘professional’ has played 3 fictional roles since 2004 and made 57 appearances in non-fictional capacities, either on television or in documentary films, a profile that also does not note his 11 appearances on Democracy Now! due to the media distribution method of that show. It seems obvious that the old Arab proverb holds true here, when you point one finger at another, three point back at yourself.

Ultimately, there is very little doubt how history will view these two scholars. West will be remembered as a man who had no compunctions about putting his philosophy into a living praxis, whereas Dyson will be remembered as a man of many syllables and little action.

The Future of Solidarity

Edward Martin & Mateo Pimentel

The future of solidarity in Catholic social teaching provides the basis for a human rights policy that grants priority to the claims of people whose human dignity is threatened by systemic and structural injustice. This development has been supported by the inclusion of Marxist analysis. In a world that is constantly assuming new organizational institutions, the rights and dignities of persons are still at risk. Consequently, solidarity in both Catholic and Marxist notions prioritize institutional protection and human rights. David Hollenbach, S.J. states, “Thus, since Vatican II, the documents have emphasized the importance of discriminating (or discerning) attention to the differences in the social institutions which affect the dignity of different groups and classes of persons. Specifically, such attention means granting special priority to meeting minimum human needs for food, clothing, shelter and other basic necessities of human life. The economic patterns of contemporary society, especially in the international domain, have created an enormous inequality in levels of nutrition, health, housing and basic social services. Staggeringly large numbers of persons live well below the human minimum in these basic areas.”

In the early development of Catholic social thought (Rerum Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno), claims to basic needs are not granted priority over political liberty. Yet, over the years, the Church has come to the conclusion that basic needs and liberty are both essential for a balanced and integrated understanding of human dignity. However, through the principle of solidarity, the Church now asserts that a greater priority is placed on human needs as the foundation for human rights. When conflicts arise between the claims of the poor and those of the rich, or between the claims of the economically powerful and the socially marginalized, solidarity grants priority to the claims of the poorest of the poor. In other terms, those in need have a “right” to a minimum standard over and above the rights of those whose basic needs have been met in abundance. Stressing this point, Pope Paul VI states, “He who has the goods of this world and sees his brother in need and closes his heart to him, how does the love of God abide in him?” It is well known to all how seriously the fathers of the Church described the obligation of the affluent to those in need: ‘You are not making a gift to the poor man from your possessions,’ says St. Ambrose, ‘but you are returning what is his’…No one is allowed to set aside solely for his own advantage possessions which exceed his needs when others lack the necessities of life.”

Consequently, in an affluent society, needs-based claims deserve priority status in a human rights policy. In a less than affluent society, the needs of the poor will demand even greater priority, especially as affluence increasingly diminishes, meaning the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. A community that embodies solidarity will then support policies based on these priorities.

Liberal theory holds that not all individuals are willing to have society guarantee economic rights and concludes that these rights cannot be identified outside claims to political liberty. Catholic and Marxist views, on the other hand, note that unrestricted liberty in a class stratified society leads to jeopardizing social and economic rights. To mitigate this, then, according to Marxist and Catholic thought, economic liberty must be restricted if social and economic claims are to be guaranteed. Thus, in both liberal and radical traditions, the effective recognition of rights depends on a choice regarding how political power will be used—in one case, for the protection of liberty, in the other, for the protection of economic and social participation. It is the principle of solidarity in Catholic and Marxist spheres that prioritizes competing claims and establishes concrete priorities for a human rights policy aimed at making public policy and administrative decisions. Hollenbach states, “Policy, therefore must seek to counteract marginalization in each of the areas of need, freedom and relationship. Specifically, the societal effort to implement and institutionalize rights should adopt the following three strategic moral priorities: 1.) The needs of the poor take priority over the wants of the rich. 2.) The freedom of the dominated takes priority over the liberty of the powerful. 3.) The participation of marginalized groups takes priority over the preservation of an order which excludes them.”

If this prioritization of rights is the case in Catholic social teaching—and there is ample evidence—it leaves little doubt that the Church’s social strategy has developed a socialist orientation within the Marxist tradition. This egalitarian system would allow for diversity, excellence, and undue interference (negative rights) while maintaining protection and subsistence for the poor and marginalized (positive rights). In contrast, the liberal welfare state, and, suffice it to say, the libertarian system, fail to prioritize in any definitive way the needs of the poor and their claims on self-determination. Furthermore, this construct can easily be implemented from a public policy perspective through constitutional guarantees, such as FDR’s economic bill of rights from the New Deal era and Truman’s 21-point program from the Fair Deal era. It can also be publicly administered through contractual networks with non-governmental organizations, within a “hollow state” structure suggested by H. Brinton Milward. Thus avoiding huge bureaucratic costs and expenditures.

The future of solidarity in Catholic social teaching offers a discourse with the public at large by promoting an egalitarian strategy that will secure and maintain both positive and negative freedoms. This agenda is twofold. First, Every person is to possess an equal share of basic freedoms and opportunities (including equal work, self-determination, political and economic participation) unrestricted to all persons. Second, after planning for basic social needs (including capital overhead, entitlements for individuals, etc.), income and wealth is to be divided so that each person will have a right to an equal share, subject to limitations through abilities and differing circumstances. We have termed this policy strategy “minimum equal freedom,” a construct derived from Kai Nielsen’s “justice as equality” model. Solidarity, if it is to secure a more precise definition of social justice, must incorporate “minimum equal freedom.” This model seeks to secure negative rights (i.e., freedom from undue interference of others in order to secure basic human needs). Minimum equal freedom within solidarity also seeks to secure positive rights which would allow for self-determination in pursuing basic needs. Within this model both positive and negative rights, centered on the principle of solidarity, then include: a.) equal participation in social and economic decision-making processes; b.) equal access to the means of self-realization and contribution to economic production; c.) equal opportunity to attain social offices and positions; and, d.) equal opportunity to acquire basic needs such as wealth leisure time, medical benefits, etc.

This model (solidarity and minimum equal freedom) places human needs first. Wealth, luxuries, and nonessentials would be a secondary consideration, but nevertheless, something that could be attained once basic needs are fulfilled. Radical theorists, such as R. G. Peffer, David Schweikert, and Armatya Sen, have constructed similar “solidarity” models compatible with Catholic social justice. The opposite perspective would be argued by neoconservative Catholics, such as Michael Novak, George Weigel, and Richard John Neuhaus, all of whom believe that the exercise of “virtue” and “freedom” brings about wealth, prosperity, and a just society in laissez-faire fashion. In short, neoconservatives believe that liberal capitalism provides the best and most efficient model for the distribution of basic needs and superfluous wealth. For such neoconservatives, gross domestic product (GDP) is the major criteria for assessing the “morality” and “virtue” of an economy. On the other hand, while not ruling out the importance of economic growth, total GDP as a preeminent standard for assessing the effectiveness of an economy would be rejected by the principles of solidarity since it does not guarantee basic needs and the participation of others in social and economic affairs.

Essentially, the goal of solidarity is to reorder social and economic strategies at domestic and international levels. What has nevertheless taken place with our inclusion of “minimum equal freedom” into the principle of solidarity is that Catholic social teaching now has a specific direction and framework in which it can prioritize the needs of the poor and marginalized. It can also be used as a model for public policy. The future of solidarity thus coincides with, and owes, its development to global socialist remedies that can be noted in Michael Harrington, who states, “The new socialism will have to provide, not simply practical and immediate solutions to this common crisis of North and South, but solutions that at least move in the direction of changing the way in which economic resources are allocated internationally. That is, socialism itself will have to become international as never before. Promoting the economic development of poor countries will not be enough, though it is a critical precondition for everything else. The socialist point is to do that in such a way as to liberate human beings as well as resources in the South and to increase the equality and solidarity of the world as a whole.”

A socialist economy and polity based on solidarity is, notwithstanding, to be preferred to liberal capitalism. The liberal paradigm is caught in a serious contradiction as Theodore Lowi puts it, because, “Stress on civil liberties is always likely to work to the benefit of those who already have the wealth and power to defend their liberties as well as their luxuries. The contradiction between civil liberties and economic privilege is a true contradiction, not merely one in the mind of the analyst. Moreover, a socialist solution does indeed provide a way out of liberal contradictions.” On the other hand, Lowi argues that socialism brings on its own set of contradictions. He states, “Yet [socialism] does so by encouraging contradictions of another kind. A socialist government may never be able to solve for itself the problem of restoring civil liberties once they have been suspended … If socialist governments attempt to maintain a semblance of civil liberties through participation, they risk undermining the organizational capacity and professional ability to plan for the rationality and equality they seek.” Lowi goes on to argue that modern experience shows that there is little evidence that socialist experiments have upheld civil liberties in an humane fashion. The choice between liberalism and socialism therefore becomes, for Lowi, a question of choosing between greater goods and lesser evils, or “to choose among alternative contradictions.”

But does socialism, as understood within the context of solidarity, necessitate the suspension of civil liberties? As alluded to earlier, Marx and his interpreters would argue otherwise. R. G. Peffer states, “Marx is a democrat and, in many ways, a liberal. As a radical journalist writing for opposition newspapers in Germany, he defended the freedom of the press and freedom of thought and, as we have seen, demanded that the state be subject to the will of the people rather than the reverse … consequently, he defends universal suffrage and participation of all in political processes.” Marx himself states, “In an ethical state, the view of the state is subordinated to its members, even if they oppose an organ of the state or the government.” In socialism and authentic Marxist thought, civil liberties and democratic rights are not mutually exclusive notions, as Lowi misinterprets. Lowi’s observations deal more specifically with totalitarian strategies and not with humanistic and democratic forms of socialism, which Marx supported. Consequently, placing priorities on solidarity policies within the framework of a constitution and bill of rights is feasible in both socialist and capitalist venues.

Introducing solidarity into political life as a new social ethic may also present problems. Because of its religious dimension, the implementation of solidarity may find resistance from secularists. And, this resistance is in no way limited to secularists. Conversely, people and institutions espousing religious convictions with regard to solidarity may also be resistant to this theory. This includes the Catholic Church as an institution, which has been resistant to unionization of their schools and hospitals. Andzrej Korbonski, addressing pluralist developments in Poland (the seat of solidarity), notes that, “Even the Roman Catholic church, which supposedly preached tolerance and respect for individual rights, has become a tower of intolerance insisting on protecting its own interests at the expense of others, and contributing to the continued polarization and fragmentation of Polish society.” As a result, while the Church actively promotes the rhetoric of solidarity and the principles of democracy, the internal dynamic within the Church remains authoritarian along with the entire Vatican state.

But whatever the reason(s) may be for a lack of progress toward solidarity (civil society), one main reason stands out: the continuing hegemony of private over public virtues. Generally, public virtue deals with tolerance, compromise, respect for others, and a willingness to participate in community. In contrast, private virtues include (but are not restricted to) a lack of tolerance of others, unwillingness to compromise, dislike for other or “different” people, a contempt for other peoples’ ideas and lifestyles, and the legitimization of any conceivable form of bigotry or prejudice. However, it remains to be seen whether agents within the solidarity paradigm can overcome, through public virtue, the potential divisions at the level of private virtue.

What has developed in Catholic social teaching as a result of its leftist trend by way of solidarity is a deeper and clearer rationale for the Church’s “preferential option for the poor.” This option must also extend into international financial systems. Pope John Paul II states, “Concern for the poor … must be translated at all levels into concrete actions, until it attains a series of necessary reforms … the reform of the world monetary financial system.” This order grants priority to claims of human needs over the claims of unlimited wants. It supports human rights and a sustainable environment while fostering the interdependence of all people. Solidarity seeks to limit unrestrained freedom and power while simultaneously empowering those who lack freedom to attain basic needs. In this sense, solidarity is the key to the present and future formation of human rights and serves as an indispensable element in the Church’s struggle for justice in the world. The future of solidarity in Catholic social teaching, combined with a more precise policy for the distribution of freedoms (minimum equal freedom), can be an effective model by which the state can foster deeper relationships amongst its people.

No Compensation

Xavier Best

No one remotely interested in US foreign policy can ignore the fact that massive civilian death has become an integral part of US warfare. Often termed “collateral damage”, these deaths are explained as the inevitable outcome of US hi-tech weaponry which often cannot discriminate between legal targets and innocent bystanders. Nonetheless, we can gain valuable insight into the reigning moral culture of certain societies by examining how powerful actors who wield these weapons respond to these deaths. Are the deaths acknowledged with remorse and sympathy or are they simply written off as the consequence of being “in the wrong place at the wrong time”? Sometimes the news cycle offers us case studies to test this question.

Such a case study can be observed in the killing of two western hostages, Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto. An American and an Italian, they were killed in a US drone strike targeting a “suspected Al Qaeda compound,” in Pakistan. As the Wall Street Journal reported “The incident also underscores the limits of U.S. intelligence and the risk of unintended consequences in executing a targeted killing program that human-rights groups say endangers civilians.” That drone strikes “endanger civilians” has been well documented for several years by reputable organizations like Reprieve and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Latest statistics reveal between 2,449 and 3,949 people have been killed in Pakistan since 2004. Of that figure between 421 and 960 were civilians (172-207 children killed). Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan are among the other countries targeted by drone strikes with the civilian death toll in Yemen between 65 and 96.

Unlike the tragic deaths of Weinstein and Lo Porto, none of these deaths elicited serious commentary within the US press beyond the predictable dismissal of unfortunate “collateral damage.” In fact, this indifference sometimes ventured into pure callousness. Take for example White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ response to the extrajudicial killing of Denver born teenager Abdulrahman Awlaki, a killing Attorney General Eric Holder rationalized on the grounds that he was “not specifically targeted.” After being asked by a reporter why this strike was authorized, Gibbs coldly replied that Abdulrahman “should have had a more responsible father,” a reference to Anwar Awlaki who was killed weeks before his son met the same fate. Needless to say, Gibbs would be ridiculed as a mindless sociopath if he expressed a similar sentiment in response to the deaths of Weinstein and Lo Porto, who, like Abdulrahman Awlaki, were not implicated in any crime. So the question is where does this indifference come from and, more importantly, what measures can be instituted to overcome it. Scholarship has plenty to say in this regard. MIT professor John Tirman explores this in his exhaustive study of civilian deaths The Death of Others. “The very fundamental norm of nation building and national survival as enabled by violence against savages,” Tirman observes, “is enormously consequential for how the deaths of the savages will be viewed.”

Further into the text Tirman adds:

“Correlating beliefs in a just world with beliefs in American ‘values’ is an essential addendum to understanding indifference … It is a foundation of American culture and has been from the beginning, and it powerfully shapes the attitudes and behavior of Americans from childhood. In its sheer explanatory power for the ‘American experience,’ it really has no rivals. It is an account of the entire scope of European immigration, expansion, and subjugation of the indigenous tribes, class conflict, and finally, American globalism.”

Therefore, engaging with the roots of American indifference to the deaths of others entails far more than merely becoming more “sensitive” to civilian suffering but a much more fundamental reevaluation in our complicity in crimes against humanity and what we can do to terminate these crimes given our ability to influence state policy. Recent polling illustrates that such an engagement has been severely lacking. Global polls published by Pew Research reveal the US as an international outlier in their support for drone strikes. Opposition in other countries is not only held by majorities but overwhelming majorities. In Lo Porto’s native Italy only 18% of its citizens supported drone strikes.

Nevertheless, US public opinion has remained relatively stable in the face of these enormous costs to civilian populations abroad. It was only after the deaths of these two western hostages that MSNBC raised the question if US drone policy should be changed. If one believes in an afterlife, there were no doubt hundreds of Yemeni, Pakistani, and Somalian ghosts asking themselves why this question could not be raised after their deaths. The huge role that pure racism plays in entrenching popular indifference to non-western victims of drone strikes cannot be ignored. In Tirman’s words, “because of the long history of racism in America, its powerful political effects over the whole of American history, and its insinuation into U.S. expansion, its plausibility as the base of indifference is apparent.”
Further insight how racism serves as “the base of indifference” can be deciphered in the rules of engagement surrounding the Obama administration’s drone policy. In all the commentary that has flooded newspapers and television programs about these tragic killings, not one person has thought to ask what right the US has to bomb Pakistan in the first place. Legal questions of this kind are inconceivable. Instead we are subjected to presidential platitudes about the unintended outcomes inherent in the “fog of war.” Incidentally, this question about the legality of drone strikes is alive and well outside of circles of US power.

Not only has the Pakistani High Court in Peshawar condemned drone strikes as an act of aggression but UN official Ben Emerson has raised many, albeit mild, criticisms of the Obama administration’s drone program, particularly what he described as “a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.” When Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar attempted to enter the US to testify about drone strikes his entry was blocked. “Before I started drone investigations I never had an issue with US visa. In fact, I had a US diplomatic visa for two years,” Akbar remarked when interviewed by the UK Guardian. None of these valiant efforts to shed light on the US drone program influenced US policy makers or public opinion in the slightest regard nor were there any polls on MSNBC (as there have been since the killing of the two western hostages) asking viewers to go online and vote if drone policy should be rethought.

There’s plenty more that could be said about the illegality and blatant immorality of a program world-renowned political dissident Noam Chomsky has described as “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times”, but these insights should suffice in exposing the glaring double standard that drives media discourse about drones and, by association, the hideous policies that increase civilian casualties outside the gaze of public scrutiny. Perhaps if the people of Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Somalia could magically evolve into blonde haired, blue-eyed white people this conversation would have emerged earlier. It’s utterly disgraceful that it took the tragic deaths of two western aid workers for it to finally begin but that doesn’t diminish the significance of the fact that this conversation has begun and that’s a promising start for all genuinely concerned about human life both in the “west” and abroad.

Tesla Tackles Global Warming

Robert Hunziker

Somebody’s gotta do it!

Meanwhile, America’s Congress ignores one of the biggest problems of all time, global warming/climate change. America’s entrepreneurs know better. They’re not waiting for Congress to fiddle whilst the planet burns.

American ingenuity, in the hands of Tesla Motors Inc., is taking on global warming head on. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, is risking a fortune to make a fortune with renewable energy. And, yes, he’s in it for profits, not as a benefactor to “Greenies,” but who really cares if he sets in motion an unstoppable nationwide renewable revolution.

In that regard, America is about to witness one of the greatest economic revolutions of all time as renewable energy creates jobs galore, high-paying jobs, and America’s infrastructure gets a well deserved scrubbing, out with fossil fuels, in with solar and wind.

After all, somebody has to fill in for Congress’s shortsightedness, as several prominent members of that august (cough) body don’t even believe in anthropogenic global warming, denigrating human-caused climate change at every photo-op. But, then again, what do they really, truly believe in? Where’s the nation’s “vision” when it’s so desperately needed, rather than obstruction?

But the situation with Congress is even worse than their outright obstructionism. While Tesla works to create a clean energy country, several members of Congress are scheming behind the scenes to knock down the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which will be “the first-ever national limits on global warming pollution from power plants,” according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. What’s wrong with this picture? A lot! Really, really a lot!

Nationwide Renewable Energy Announcement Coming, April 30th

Shouldn’t Congress be making announcements like this?

Elon Musk recently informed Wall Street to prepare for a major announcement come April 30th when Tesla will announce a home battery system and a “very large” utility-scale battery for 24/7 solar power. Of utmost interest, Tesla will explain the advantages of the new battery solutions as well as the reasons why past battery solutions were not compelling.

A system of 24/7 solar energy, including auxiliary battery-power, is America’s energy dream come true in response to critics who astutely point out that solar doesn’t work so well when the sun sets.

Tesla’s innovation not only revolutionizes energy worldwide, it impacts foreign policy throughout the Middle East, breaking the U.S./Saudi juggernaut, which arguably keeps the region in constant conflict. After all, Saudi Arabia may go broke.

Not only that, America’s Congress should be shamed, embarrassed, humiliated as they’ve been sitting on comparable technology used by the International Space Station for years.

Anyway, the Tesla story only gets better. Here’s what Tesla Chief Technology Officer, J B Straubel said last month at the Vail Global Energy Forum: “Eventually you’re going to have a 100% battery electric vehicle fleet, working in tandem with an almost 100% renewable electric utility grid full of solar and wind” (Bloomberg News).

Significantly, Tesla’s charge into renewables for home and biz is not a pipedream. It’s happening right now in real time.

24/7 Solar Battery Systems

“Tesla has been able to install more than 100 projects, really without anyone noticing,”
Andrea James, analyst with Dougherty & Co. (Bloomberg News, April 22, 2015).

Tesla has already installed its batteries in 300 California solar-powered homes.

Wal-Mart has already installed Tesla batteries in eleven California stores with solar power.

According to Wine Business Monthly, Jackson Family Wines in Santa Rosa, California is in partnership with Tesla for battery storage and vehicle charging stations.

Cargill plans to use a one-megawatt system with Tesla batteries for clean energy at its Fresno, California plant.

The Temecula Valley Unified School District in Southern California is planning on use of Tesla batteries for their solar installations. According to Janet Dixon, director of facilities at Temecula, “We spend roughly $3 million a year on electricity, and most of that is lighting and air conditioning. We are going solar to reduce our overall costs and the battery storage should help us manage our peak demand.”

At the end of the day, one can only wonder whether Elon Musk’s face belongs on Mt Rushmore right next to Abraham Lincoln who saved the country from itself by winning the battle against ignorance, intolerance, and small-mindedness. Although not a public servant like Lincoln, Musk is fighting the same battle today on behalf of the entire country.

Musk’s technological genius is a potent dynamic, offsetting all-powerful political forces that deprive the country of a nationwide renewable energy plan… clean energy!

All of which goes to underscore the shamelessness of dirty politics and dirty fossil fuels, which go hand-in-hand.

The Political Economy of Fashion

Louis Proyect

Perhaps there is no better example of Karl Marx’s “fetishism of commodities” than the clothes we buy. Since “Capital” refers almost continuously to the textile industry that was the lynchpin of the burgeoning capitalist system, this makes perfect sense. As Sven Beckert, the author of the highly acclaimed “Empire of Cotton”, put it in a Chronicle of Higher Education article in December, 2014, the raw material and the manufacturing system it fed were midwives to a global system that continues to punish the workers who reamain its captives:

Just as cotton, and with it slavery, became key to the U.S. economy, it also moved to the center of the world economy and its most consequential transformations: the creation of a globally interconnected economy, the Industrial Revolution, the rapid spread of capitalist social relations in many parts of the world, and the Great Divergence—the moment when a few parts of the world became quite suddenly much richer than every other part. The humble fiber, transformed into yarn and cloth, stood at the center of the emergence of the industrial capitalism that is so familiar to us today. Our modern world originates in the cotton factories, cotton ports, and cotton plantations of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Not very much has changed since Karl Marx wrote about the textile industry except the geography. In the 1840s it was the factories of Birmingham, England and the cotton plantations of the slave states that were connected. Today it is China and India that are the largest producers of cotton, while the textile mills are no longer in the countries that were in the vanguard of capitalist development. They have relocated to places like Cambodia and Bangladesh, the places that director Andrew Morgan visited in the course of making “The True Cost”, a documentary that opens on May 30 (see http://truecostmovie.com/ for screening information).

As the film begins, Morgan explains that he decided to make “The True Cost” after hearing about the “accidents” that were taking the lives of so many Bangladeshi garment workers, nearly all of whom were female and from the impoverished countryside. Accident is in scare quotes because it was common knowledge that the buildings they worked in were firetraps or ready to collapse. In the case of the most infamous incident, the collapse of the Savar building in 2013 that took the lives of 1,129 workers and injured an additional 2,515, the workers had implored the boss to make repairs but to no avail. As the film explains, the garment business is marked by a vicious race to the bottom in which repairs to a building such as this might force the boss to charge pennies more for his goods. And so he gambles with the lives of his workers instead.

Morgan also takes a close look at the modern-day cotton plantations that are much less labor-intensive than in Marx’s day. The real risk is not so much the overseer’s whip but the chemicals that have become necessary in cotton production, especially Monsanto’s Roundup that along with other chemicals in the fields has produced a virtual cancer alley in the cotton producing belt in Texas.

In India, as Vandana Shiva explains to Morgan, Monsanto has a stranglehold on farmers because its cotton seeds are the corporation’s “intellectual property” that increase its profits at the expense of heavily indebted farmers. Their suicides and the death by disaster in Bangladesh are the collateral damage imposed by a garment industry that has made “fashion” so cheap that the average person can fill a closet with blue jeans and dress shirts at cut-rate prices even as is so often the case that they far exceed one’s actual needs. Morgan notes that in the US there has been a 500% clothing consumption increase in the last two decades alone, the counterpart of the empty calories you get at McDonalds.

In stores such as H&M and Zara, you can buy a pair of jeans for $10—the ultimate commodity in late capitalist society for making you feel “cool”. It was no accident, after all, that blue jeans became a kind of battering ram to destroy the “actually existing” socialism of the Soviet bloc. In exchange for the freedom to buy a pair of Levi’s, you got a degraded health system and oligarchic excess.

Morgan interviews economics professor Richard Wolff at some length, who explains that the garment industry is part and parcel of a system that benefits those who exploit labor while creating the illusion that it benefits all. It is in films such as “The True Cost” that the left is getting its message out to a broader audience, a feature of modern-day revolutionary politics that is astute enough to exploit the documentary film medium, which is in many ways the counterpart of Lenin’s Iskra.

It is also of some interest that a number of the interviewees come out of the fashion industry, a sector of the economy not particularly known for its concerns about social justice—at least at first blush. One of them actually served as executive producers for “The True Cost”. Lucy Firth, the wife of actor Colin Firth, is the executive director of Eco-Age, an advocacy group for garment workers worldwide. Firth is also involved with making garments herself, using recycled materials. In a 2011 profile on Firth, the Guardian reported:

It’s this combination of natural, unforced glamour and integrity (Firth wants to achieve what she calls “a meaningful aesthetic”) that has captured the fashion world’s imagination. “I think people are really sick of seeing people who are surgically enhanced and look a certain, unattainable way. She’s a positive fashion role model – and in many ways an accidental one.”

Firth recently said how hilarious she found it when, while talking to the singer Annie Lennox, a renowned feminist, Lennox apologised for referring to her as “Colin Firth’s wife”. She laughed and replied: “What is the problem? I don’t care. Why does being a feminist mean you can’t be someone’s wife?”

Is it reasonable to apply the term “meaningful aesthetic” to fashion? At the risk of sounding like someone who has succumbed to the fetishism of commodities, I would say so. In my reviews of documentaries on designer superstars Karl Lagerfeld and Valentino, I tried to make the case that there is a real artistry at work in high fashion even if the people who buy the garments are the class enemy. That has been true all along in the fine arts so why would we make an exception for shoes and gowns?

If not a documentary, the 2014 biopic “Yves Saint Laurent” is a very truthful account of the 20^th century’s most famous high fashion designer. Now available on Netflix and opening as well at the Film Forum in New York on June 25th, the film is well written and acted, and is a good complement to the aforementioned documentaries.

As someone who owned a YSL suit many years ago, and who has a bottle of cologne with his imprint even now, I suppose I can be considered partial to the subject. So be it.

Thanks to this film, I have a much better idea of the man than the one I had when I would glance at his name in a gossip column where he was so ubiquitous in the 70s and 80s, cheek by jowl with Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger, and other beautiful people.

Despite his sybaritic appearance, Yves Saint Laurent was a tortured soul through most of his life, especially in 1960 when he was drafted into the French army that was then trying to suppress a revolution in Algeria, Saint Laurent’s place of birth in Oran, 1936. Singled out as a gay man, he was tormented in basic training so much so that he ended up in a mental hospital where he received electroshock treatments. It is the trauma he suffered here that was likely responsible for the alcoholism and drug addiction that haunted him until death.

What probably kept him going was his long-time relationship with Pierre Bergé, his business partner who made sure that YSL remained profitable despite the designer’s periodic self-destructive binges. As was the case with the documentary about Valentino, who had the same kind of relationship with a man who managed his business affairs, the film is blessed by a refusal to cater to the “tragic gay” stereotypes of Hollywood films such as “Brokeback Mountain” or “Philadelphia”. Saint Laurent and Bergé certainly had their problems but being homosexual was not one of them.

Much of the film consists of Yves Saint Laurent working with his models or on a sketchpad bringing his ideas to fruition. In the most interesting example of his creative insights, we see him getting the brainstorm of adapting Mondrian’s art to a woman’s dress.

Yves Saint Laurent was the first designer to come out with a prêt-à-porter (ready-to-wear) line, in his case a conscious decision to democratize fashion. Written not long after his death of brain cancer in 2008, a NY Times article summed up his contributions to art and culture more generally:

The shape and texture of high fashion today owes as much to Saint Laurent as do those women who were given the unisex freedom of a pantsuit – from Bianca Jagger in her wedding attire, through Catherine Deneuve in her “le smoking” tuxedo to Hillary Clinton in a female politician’s uniform.

It was indeed YSL who equated fashion with art, not just by coloring in the 1960s with Piet Mondrian’s graphic squares or embroidering Van Gogh paintings on a jacket, but by himself collecting fine art, with Bergé, and by having the first museum show of a living fashion creator at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1983. Every designer who now stages a retrospective display can trace the concept back to YSL.

In almost any respect the Saint Laurent trajectory from half a century ago was the template for new generations of designers. He was ridiculously young – at 21 – to be entrusted with the house of Christian Dior, after its founder died in 1957. Yet he invented what is now the norm: youth and cool. YSL celebrated that both on the runway with an alligator biker jacket, inspired by Marlon Brando, and in his young life with a louche group of friends.

“Yves Saint Laurent” was written and directed by Jalil Lespert, who played the young manager in Laurent Cantet’s great film “Human Resources”. Pierre Niney plays Yves Saint Laurent to perfection while Guillaume Gallienne is cast as his partner, both in business and live, Pierre Bergé. According to Wikipedia, Gallienne had something in common with Saint Laurent, being bullied in prep school for being effeminate (however, he is heterosexual.)

Like any biopic about an artist such as “Lust for Life”, based on Vincent Van Gogh, the film is worth seeing just for the display of the subject’s work. One look at a fashion show in the film will remind you why the Metropolitan Museum devoted an exhibition to Yves Saint Laurent. But like “Lust for Life”, detailing another creative man’s torments, this film is distinguished by its human drama and as such is worth watching, whatever attitude you have toward high fashion.

Weaponizing Information

Joyce Nelson

In mid-April, hundreds of U.S. paratroopers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade arrived in western Ukraine to provide training for government troops. The UK had already started its troop-training mission there, sending 75 troops to Kiev in March. On April 14, the Canadian government announced that Canada will send 200 soldiers to Kiev, contributing to a military build-up on Russia’s doorstep while a fragile truce is in place in eastern Ukraine.

The Russian Embassy in Ottawa called the decision “counterproductive and deplorable,” stating that the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine have “called for enhanced intra-Ukrainian political dialogue,” as agreed upon in the Minsk-2 accords in February, and that it would be “much more reasonable to concentrate on diplomacy…” 

That viewpoint is shared by many, especially in Europe where few are eager for a “hot” war in the region. Nor are most people enamoured of the fact that more billions are being spent on a new arms-race, while “austerity” is preached by the 1 Per Cent.

But in the Anglo-American corridors of power (also called the Atlantic Alliance), such views are seen to be the result of diabolical propaganda spread through the Internet by Russia’s “secret army.” On April 15, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Ed Royce (R-Calif.), held a hearing entitled “Confronting Russia’s Weaponization of Information,” with Royce claiming that Russian propaganda threatens “to destabilize NATO members, impacting our security commitments.” 

The Committee heard from three witnesses: Elizabeth Wahl, former anchor for the news agency Russia Today (RT) who gained her moment of fame by resigning on camera in March 2014; Peter Pomerantsev, Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute (a right-wing UK think-tank); and Helle C. Dale, Senior Fellow for Public Diplomacy at The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing U.S. think-tank. The Foreign Affairs Committee website contains video clips of the first two witnesses – well worth watching if you enjoy Orwellian rhetoric passionately delivered.

The day before the hearing, in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Royce wrote, “Vladimir Putin has a secret army. It’s an army of thousands of ‘trolls,’ TV anchors and others who work day and night spreading anti-American propaganda on the Internet, airwaves and newspapers throughout Russia and the world. Mr. Putin uses these misinformation warriors to destabilize his neighbors and control parts of Ukraine. This force may be more dangerous than any military, because no artillery can stop their lies from spreading and undermining U.S. security interests in Europe.” 

In her formal (printed) submission, Ms. Wahl referred to the Internet’s “population of paranoid skeptics” and wrote: “The paranoia extends to believing that Western media is not only complicit, but instrumental in ensuring Western dominance.”

Helle C. Dale warned of “a new kind of propaganda, aimed at sowing doubt about anything having to do with the U.S. and the West, and in a number of countries, unsophisticated audiences are eating it up.”

Peter Pomerantsev claimed that Russia’s goal is “to trash the information space with so much disinformation so that a conversation based on actual facts would become impossible.” He added, “Throughout Europe conspiracy theories are on the rise and in the US trust in the media has declined. The Kremlin may not always have initiated these phenomena, but it is fanning them…Democracies are singularly ill equipped to deal with this type of warfare. For all of its military might, NATO cannot fight an information war. The openness of democracies, the very quality that is meant to make them more competitive than authoritarian models, becomes a vulnerability.”

Chairman Royce called for “clarifying” the mission of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the U.S. federal agency whose networks include Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa), Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and TV Marti).

The BBG is apparently in disarray. According to Helle Dale’s submission, on March 4, 2015, Andrew Lack, the newly hired CEO of BBG’s International Broadcasting, left the position after only six weeks on the job. On April 7, the Director of Voice of America, David Ensor, announced that he was leaving.

Andrew Lack was formerly the president of NBC News. As Paul Craig Roberts has recently noted, Lack’s first official statement as CEO of the BBG “compared RT, Russia Today, the Russian-based news agency, with the Islamic State and Boko Haram. In other words, Mr. Lack brands RT as a terrorist organization. The purpose of Andrew Lack’s absurd comparison is to strike fear at RT that the news organization will be expelled from US media markets. Andrew Lack’s message to RT is: ‘lie for us or we are going to expel you from our air waves.’ The British already did this to Iran’s Press TV. In the United States the attack on Internet independent media is proceeding on several fronts.” 

Ironically, however, it’s likely that one of the biggest threats (especially in Europe) to Anglo-American media credibility about Ukraine and other issues is coming from a very old-fashioned medium – a book.
Udo Ulfkotte’s bestseller Bought Journalists has been a sensation in Germany since its publication last autumn. The journalist and former editor of one of Germany’s largest newspapers, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, revealed that he was for years secretly on the payroll of the CIA and was spinning the news to favour U.S. interests. Moreover he alleges that some major media are nothing more than propaganda outlets for international think-tanks, intelligence agencies, and corporate high-finance. “We’re talking about puppets on a string,” he says, “journalists who write or say whatever their masters tell them to say or write. If you see how the mainstream media is reporting about the Ukraine conflict and if you know what’s really going on, you get the picture. The masters in the background are pushing for war with Russia and western journalists are putting on their helmets.” 

In another interview, Ulfkotte said: “The German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia. This is a point of no return, and I am going to stand up and say…it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do, and have done in the past, because they are bribed to betray the people not only in Germany, all over Europe.”

With the credibility of the corporate media tanking, Eric Zuesse recently wrote, “Since Germany is central to the Western Alliance – and especially to the American aristocracy’s control over the European Union, over the IMF, over the World Bank, and over NATO – such a turn away from the American Government [narrative] threatens the dominance of America’s aristocrats (who control our Government). A breakup of America’s [Atlantic] ‘Alliance’ might be in the offing, if Germans continue to turn away from being just America’s richest ‘banana republic’.” 

No wonder the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on April 15 had such urgent rhetoric, especially from Peter Pomerantsev, Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute – a London-based international think-tank whose motto is “Prosperity Through Revitalizing Capitalism and Democracy” and whose stated mission is “promoting prosperity through individual liberty, free enterprise and entrepreneurship, character and values.”

At the end of March, Conservative London mayor Boris Johnson (named as a potential successor to David Cameron) helped launch the Legatum Institute’s “Vision of Capitalism” speakers’ series, whose rallying cry is “It’s time for friends of capitalism to fight back.” The sponsor of the event was the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA), whose membership comprises “more than 500 influential firms, including over 230 private equity and venture capital houses, as well as institutional investors, professional advisers, service providers and international associations.” It is not clear whether the BVCA is also sponsoring the Legatum Institute’s “Vision of Capitalism” series.

The Legatum Institute was founded by billionaire Christopher Chandler’s Legatum Ltd. – a private investment firm headquartered in Dubai. According to The Legatum Institute’s website, its executives and fellows write for an impressive number of major media outlets, including the Washington Post, Slate, the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, New Republic, the Daily Telegraph, The Times, the London Review of Books, the Atlantic, and the Financial Times.

Nonetheless, the Legatum Institute’s Peter Pomeranzev told the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs that “Russia has launched an information war against the West – and we are losing.”
Chairperson Ed Royce noted during the hearing that if certain things are repeated over and over, a “conspiracy theory” takes on momentum and a life of its own.

Pomeranzev said the Kremlin is “pushing out more conspiracy” and he explained, “What is conspiracy – sort of a linguistic sabotage on the infrastructure of reason. I mean you can’t have a reality-based discussion when everything becomes conspiracy. In Russia, the whole discourse is conspiracy. Everything is conspiracy.” He added, “Our global order is based on reality-based politics. If that reality base is destroyed, then you can’t have international institutions, international dialogue.” Lying, he said, “makes a reality-based politics impossible” and he called it “a very insidious trend.”

Apparently, Pomeranzev has forgotten that important October 2004 article by Ron Suskind published in the New York Times Magazine during the second war in Iraq (which, like the first, was based on a widely disseminated lie). Suskind quoted one of George W. Bush’s aides (probably Karl Rove): “The aide said that guys like me [journalists, writers, historians] were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality…That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’.” 

It’s a rather succinct description of Orwellian spin and secrecy in a media-saturated Empire, where discerning the truth becomes ever more difficult.

That is why people believe someone like Udo Ulfkotte, who is physically ill, says he has only a few years left to live, and told an interviewer, “I am very fearful of a new war in Europe, and I don’t like to have this situation again, because war is never coming from itself, there is always people who push for war, and this is not only politicians, it is journalists too…We have betrayed our readers, just to push for war…I don’t want this anymore, I’m fed up with this propaganda. We live in a banana republic and not in a democratic country where we have press freedom…” 

Recently, as Mike Whitney has pointed out in CounterPunch (March 10), Germany’s newsmagazine Der Spiegel dared to challenge the fabrications of NATO’s top commander in Europe, General Philip Breedlove, for spreading “dangerous propaganda” that is misleading the public about Russian “troop advances” and making “flat-out inaccurate statements” about Russian aggression.

Whitney asks, “Why this sudden willingness to share the truth? It’s because they no longer support Washington’s policy, that’s why. No one in Europe wants the US to arm and train the Ukrainian army. No wants them to deploy 600 paratroopers to Kiev and increase U.S. logistical support. No one wants further escalation, because no wants a war with Russia. It’s that simple.” Whitney argued that “the real purpose of the Spiegel piece is to warn Washington that EU leaders will not support a policy of military confrontation with Moscow.”

So now we know the reason for the timing of the April 15 U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, “Confronting Russia’s Weaponization of Information.” Literally while U.S. paratroopers were en route to Kiev, the hawks in Washington (and London) knew it was time to crank up the rhetoric. The three witnesses were most eager to oblige.

Mass Surveillance is Driven by the Private Sector

Bill Blunden

Yet another report has surfaced describing how tools created by the malware-industrial complex are being deployed by U.S. security services. While the coverage surrounding this story focuses primarily on federal agencies it’s important to step back for a moment and view the big picture. In particular, looking at who builds, operates, and profits from mass surveillance technology offers insight into the nature of the global panopticon.

A report published by Privacy International as well as an article posted by Vice Motherboard clearly show that both the DEA and the United States Army have long-standing relationships with Hacking Team, an Italian company that’s notorious for selling malware to any number of unsavory characters.

Federal records indicate that the DEA and Army purchased Hacking Team’s Remote Control System (RCS) package. RCS is a rootkit, a software backdoor with lots of bells and whistles. It’s a product that facilitates a covert foothold on infected machines so intruders can quietly make off with sensitive data. The aforementioned sensitive data includes encryption keys. In fact, Hacking Team has an RCS brochure that tells potential customers:

“What you need is a way to bypass encryption, collect relevant data out of any device, and keep monitoring your targets wherever they are, even outside your monitoring domain”

[Note: Readers interested in nitty-gritty details about RCS can check out the Manuals online.]

It’s public knowledge that other federal agencies like the FBI and the CIA have become adept at foiling encryption. Yet this kind of subversion doesn’t necessarily bother high tech luminaries like Bruce Schneier, who believe that spying is “perfectly reasonable” as long as it’s targeted. Ditto that for Ed Snowden. Schneier and Snowden maintain that covert ops, shrouded by layers of official secrecy, are somehow compatible with democracy just so long as they’re narrow in scope.

But here’s the catch: RCS is designed and marketed as a means for mass collection. It violates the targeted surveillance condition. Specifically, a Hacking Team RCS brochure proudly states:

“’Remote Control System’ can monitor from a few and up to hundreds of thousands of targets. The whole system can be managed by a single easy to use interface that simplifies day by day investigation activities.”

Does this sound like a product built for targeted collection?

So there you have it. Subverting encryption en masse compliments of Hacking Team. The fact that there’s an entire industry of companies just like this should give one pause as there are unsettling ramifications regarding the specter of totalitarian control.

Corporate America is Mass Surveillance

Throughout the Snowden affair there’s a theme that recurs. It appeared recently in a foreword written by Glenn Greenwald for Tom Engelhardt’s book Shadow Government:

“I really don’t think there’s any more important battle today than combating the surveillance state [my emphasis]. Ultimately, the thing that matters most is that the rights that we know we have as human beings are rights that we exercise.”

There’s a tendency to frame mass surveillance in terms of the state. As purely a result of government agencies like the CIA and NSA. The narrative preferred by the far right is one which focuses entirely on the government (the so-called “surveillance state”) as the sole culprit, completely ignoring the corporate factions that fundamentally shape political decision making.

American philosopher John Dewey once observed that “power today resides in control of the means of production, exchange, publicity, transportation and communication. Whoever owns them rules the life of the country,” even under the pretense of democratic structures.

There are some 1300 billionaires in the United States who can testify to this fact. As can anyone following the developments around the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Dewey’s observation provides a conceptual basis for understanding how business interests drive the global surveillance apparatus. Mass surveillance is a corporate endeavor because the people who inevitably drive decisions are the same ones who control the resources. For example, the backbone of the internet itself consists of infrastructure run by Tier 1 providers like Verizon and Level 3 Communications. These companies are in a perfect position to track users and that’s exactly what they do.

Furthermore when spying is conducted it’s usually executed, in one form or another, by business interests. Approximately 70 percent of the national intelligence budget end up being channeled to defense contractors. Never mind that the private sector’s surveillance machinery dwarfs the NSA’s as spying on users is an integral part of high tech’s business model. Internet companies like Google operate their services by selling user information to the data brokers. The data broker industry, for example, generates almost $200 billion a year in revenue. That’s well over twice the entire 2014 U.S. intelligence budget.

From a historical vantage point it’s imperative to realize that high tech companies are essentially the offspring of the defense industry. This holds true even today as companies like Google are heavily linked with the Pentagon. For decades (going back to the days of Crypto AG) the private sector has collaborated heavily with the NSA’s in its campaign of mass subversion: the drive to insert hidden back doors and weaken encryption protocols across the board. Companies have instituted “design changes” that make computers and network devices “exploitable.” It’s also been revealed that companies like Microsoft have secret agreements with U.S. security services to provide information on unpublished vulnerabilities in exchange for special benefits like access to classified intelligence.

In a nutshell: contrary to talking points that depict hi-tech companies as our saviors, they’re more often accomplices if not outright perpetrators of mass surveillance. And you can bet that CEOs will devote significant resources towards public relations campaigns aimed at obscuring this truth.

Denouement

A parting observation: the current emphasis on Constitutional freedom neglects the other pillar of the Constitution: equality. Concentrating intently on liberty while eschewing the complementary notion of equality leads to the sort of ugly practices that preceded the Civil War. In fact there are those who would argue that society is currently progressing towards something worse, a reality by the way that the financial elite are well aware of. When the public’s collective misery reaches a tipping point, and people begin to mobilize, the digital panopticon of the ruling class will be leveraged to preserve social control. They’ll do what they’ve always done, tirelessly work to maintain power and impose hierarchy.

French, Tunisian presidents use terror attacks to cement military ties

Antoine Lerougetel

French president François Hollande took part in a march against terrorism organised on March 29 by his Tunisian counterpart, Beji Caid Essebsi, based on the “We are Charlie” march in Paris on January 11. It was in response to a jihadist attack on the Bardo Museum in central Tunis on March 18, which left 22 dead and more than 50 wounded, mostly foreign tourists.

Essebsi reciprocated with a two-day state visit to France on April 7-8. After revolutionary uprisings overthrew Western-backed dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011, the French and Tunisian governments are using Islamist attacks to justify boosting police-state powers, indiscriminate surveillance, and the use of the army at home and abroad. This is designed above all to intimidate and suppress opposition in the working class against war and the austerity demanded by the banks and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In Paris, Essebsi said, “France is our top partner…we are open to every kind of collaboration…economic, political, social and even on security,” while Hollande promised “exemplary cooperation” on these issues.

Already on March 20, two days after the Bardo assault, French imperialism was back in business supplying the Tunisian regime’s repressive forces. Hollande dispatched his interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, to Tunis, where he committed France to sending police to help with investigations of the Bardo attackers and providing advisors and trainers for frontier police and airport security.

Tunisia’s head of diplomacy, Taïbe Baccouche, has declared that negotiations for arms supplies are ongoing with France and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to block jihadist incursion from Libya and Algeria. France has just signed a deal to sell 36 Rafale fighter planes to the UAE, only weeks after it sold 24 Rafales to the murderous Sisi dictatorship in Egypt.

French imperialist interests in Tunisia, a former French colony, were staggered by the mass revolt of the working class and youth that forced Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali to flee to Saudi Arabia on January 14, 2011. This sparked mass protests in the Arab world, above all the revolutionary uprising in the working class that toppled Egyptian military dictator Hosni Mubarak weeks later. Le Monde recently lauded the transition from the Ben Ali dictatorship to the present parliamentary coalition of Essebsi’s Nidaa Tounes party with the Islamist Ennahda as a “model political transition.” In fact, the transition has been a struggle by the ruling elites to deprive Tunisian workers and youth of the fruits of the uprising, and to reestablish the feared police-state apparatus of Ben Ali. The Bardo killings are being exploited as a pretext to advance this process.

Founded in 2012 as a secular opponent of Ennahda, Nidaa Tounes united the supporters of the old Ben Ali regime and other pro-capitalist, petty bourgeois forces critical of the 2011-2014 Ennahda government.

Ennahda pursued reactionary economic policies and proved deeply unpopular in the working class. It also did little to discover the identity of the killers of Popular Front leaders Chokri Belaïd and Mohamed Brahmi, in February and July 2013, respectively.

In terms of their support for imperialism and finance capital and their hostility to the working class, Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes are indistinguishable. In this year’s legislative elections, Nidaa Tounes attacked Ennahda’s Islamism, enabling it to win the largest number of seats, though not a majority. Essebsi then chose to form a coalition government with Ennahda.

Zied Laâdhari, an Ennadha spokesman, was made a minister, while three other Ennahda deputies became junior ministers.

Hollande and France’s ruling Socialist Party (PS) are eager to somehow stabilise bourgeois rule in Tunisia through some coalition of neo-colonial forces favorable to French imperialism. Having long rubbed shoulders with Ben Ali’s Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD), which was a member of the so-called Socialist International together with the PS, they were happy to endorse a coalition between Ennahda and the old Ben Ali regime’s supporters, aimed against the workers.

With a straight face, Hollande told Essebsi, an official in the Bourguiba and Ben Ali dictatorships, that he had “an exemplary track record regarding democracy.”

In fact, the role of the Essebsi regime is to try to suppress and, if necessary, crush opposition in the working class over the conditions of poverty imposed on the Tunisian masses. It is for this reason that the French and Tunisian states are stepping up their security collaboration.

The number of people under the poverty line has increased by 30 per cent since 2011. Wages have not kept up with inflation, which grew by 5 percent last year while the Essebsi government, at the behest of the bankers, plans to cut subsidies on basic necessities. Unemployment is officially at 15 percent, 30 per cent for postgraduates.

Last February 7 and 8, violent clashes with the police took place in Ben Guerdane and Dehiba due to a crackdown on petrol trafficking over the Libyan border. These are desperately poor areas, in which the Tunisian state brutally repressed revolts, in Sidi Bouzid and Siliana in 2012 and Gafsa in 2013, under Ennahda.