[Peace-discuss] [sftalk] Re: [OccupyCU] Our enemy is not radical Islam: it is global capitalism

[C. G. Estabrook]

I don't think these things can be decided in the abstract. They depend very much on specific, local circumstances. And the first step is to work to dispel the world-view insisted upon by the government and the media - notably the 'war on terror,' that is taken to justify current military and economic policy. 

The demonstrations of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements remain models. It's clear from his writings that the president is deeply afraid of them.   

The speed and viciousness with which the administration moved to crush Occupy indicates that fear; Obama's persecution of Manning, Assange, and Snowden show how far he will go to counter what they reveal. The worst thing the Obama administration could think of to call Manning was an "information anarchist" - unless it was that he was a "post-adolescent idealist..." We need "two, three, many post-adolescent idealists" - properly revolted by the child-killer in the White House.

That's why the two neoliberal parties so fear the emerging right-left alliance in opposition to those military and economic policies.

As it is, no high administration figure today dares to appear in public except under tightly controlled circumstances. Both parties are reviled as perhaps never before.

Of course, the parodies of democracy in our political system ("not a democracy," according to ex-president carter) should be used whenever possible - voting, addresses to elected officials, etc. 

The late anarchist Karl Hess, who began his political career as a speechwriter for Barry Goldwater, used to say, "Sometimes the most revolutionary thing you can do is talk to your neighbor."

"In a Reuters online Opinion piece, in 2012, New Yorker Maureen Tkacik asserted that Karl Hess was the ideological grandfather of the anti-1% movement – making Hess the direct antecedant of thinkers like Ron Paul and both the Tea Party movement and the Occupy movement. She cites the detailed argument Hess, in his libertarian phase, put forward in his book Dear America to delineate and decry the extreme concentration of power in the hands of a tiny financial and stock-holding elite. Ms. Tkacik quotes passages from Hess's book to offer proof that Hess developed the language of the 1% versus the 99% (the former being those whose role, according to Hess, is demonstrably detrimental to the vast majority of Americans)."

--CGE


On Aug 16, 2013, at 12:34 PM, Stephen Francis <stephenf1113 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Is demanding enough?  Should we write our congresspeople, stand on the corner with a protest sign?, block a freeway? blog online?
> 
> From: C. G. Estabrook <carl at newsfromneptune.com>
> To: Stephen Francis <stephenf1113 at yahoo.com> 
> Cc: "peace-discuss at anti-war.net" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>; "sftalk at yahoogroups.com" <sftalk at yahoogroups.com>; occupycu <occupyCU at lists.chambana.net> 
> Sent: Friday, August 16, 2013 10:09 AM
> Subject: [sftalk] Re: [OccupyCU] Our enemy is not radical Islam: it is global capitalism
> 
> As many Americans did during the Johnson-Nixon administrations, demand (1) the ending of US wars; (2) the return of US troops from abroad; and (3) the removal of officials responsible for the current US war policy.
> 
> Remarkably enough, those three steps are probably supported by a majority of the US populace today, in spite of the overwhelming opposition of the US government and propaganda system, which won't even allow them to be mentioned. 
> 
> 
> On Aug 16, 2013, at 11:51 AM, Stephen Francis <stephenf1113 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > Mr. Estabrook,
> > What do you propose an individual American citizen should do about what you have aptly identified in your email?
> > 
> > From: C. G. Estabrook <carl at newsfromneptune.com>
> > To: peace-discuss at anti-war.net 
> > Cc: "sftalk at yahoogroups.com" <sftalk at yahoogroups.com>; occupycu <occupyCU at lists.chambana.net> 
> > Sent: Friday, August 16, 2013 9:37 AM
> > Subject: [OccupyCU] Our enemy is not radical Islam: it is global capitalism
> > 
> > "...while what will take place in Egypt will be defined as a religious war, and the acts of violence by the insurgents who will rise from the bloodied squares of Cairo will be defined as terrorism, the engine for this chaos is not religion but the collapsing economy of a world where the wretched of the earth are to be subjugated and starved or shot..."
> > 
> > ===========================
> > Murdering the Wretched of the Earth
> > By Chris Hedges
> > 
> > Radical Islam is the last refuge of the Muslim poor. The mandated five prayers a day give the only real structure to the lives of impoverished believers. The careful rituals of washing before prayers in the mosque, the strict moral code, along with the understanding that life has an ultimate purpose and meaning, keep hundreds of millions of destitute Muslims from despair. The fundamentalist ideology that rises from oppression is rigid and unforgiving. It radically splits the world into black and white, good and evil, apostates and believers. It is bigoted and cruel to women, Jews, Christians and secularists, along with gays and lesbians. But at the same time it offers to those on the very bottom of society a final refuge and hope. The massacres of hundreds of believers in the streets of Cairo signal not only an assault against a religious ideology, not only a return to the brutal police state of Hosni Mubarak, but the start of a holy war that will turn Egypt and other poor regions of the globe into a caldron of blood and suffering. 
> > 
> > The only way to break the hold of radical Islam is to give its followers a stake in the wider economy, the possibility of a life where the future is not dominated by grinding poverty, repression and hopelessness. If you live in the sprawling slums of Cairo or the refugee camps in Gaza or the concrete hovels in New Delhi, every avenue of escape is closed. You cannot get an education. You cannot get a job. You do not have the resources to marry. You cannot challenge the domination of the economy by the oligarchs and the generals. The only way left for you to affirm yourself is to become a martyr, or shahid. Then you will get what you cannot get in life—a brief moment of fame and glory. And while what will take place in Egypt will be defined as a religious war, and the acts of violence by the insurgents who will rise from the bloodied squares of Cairo will be defined as terrorism, the engine for this chaos is not religion but the collapsing economy of a world where the wretched of the earth are to be subjugated and starved or shot. The lines of battle are being drawn in Egypt and across the globe. Adli Mansour, the titular president appointed by the military dictator of Egypt, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, has imposed a military-led government, a curfew and a state of emergency. They will not be lifted soon. 
> > 
> > The lifeblood of radical movements is martyrdom. The Egyptian military has provided an ample supply. The faces and the names of the sanctified dead will be used by enraged clerics to call for holy vengeance. And as violence grows and the lists of martyrs expand, a war will be ignited that will tear Egypt apart. Police, Coptic Christians, secularists, Westerners, businesses, banks, the tourism industry and the military will become targets. Those radical Islamists who were persuaded by the Muslim Brotherhood that electoral politics could work and brought into the system will go back underground, and many of the rank and file of the Muslim Brotherhood will join them. Crude bombs will be set off. Random attacks and assassinations by gunmen will puncture daily life in Egypt as they did in the 1990s when I was in Cairo for The New York Times, although this time the attacks will be wider and more fierce, far harder to control or ultimately crush.
> > 
> > What is happening in Egypt is a precursor to a wider global war between the world’s elites and the world’s poor, a war caused by diminishing resources, chronic unemployment and underemployment, overpopulation, declining crop yields caused by climate change, and rising food prices. Thirty-three percent of Egypt’s 80 million people are 14 or younger, and millions live under or just above the poverty line, which the World Bank sets at a daily income of $2 in that nation. The poor in Egypt spend more than half their income on food—often food that has little nutritional value. An estimated 13.7 million Egyptians, or 17 percent of the population, suffered from food insecurity in 2011, compared with 14 percent in 2009, according to a report by the U.N. World Food Program and the Egyptian Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS). Malnutrition is endemic among poor children, with 31 percent under 5 years old stunted in growth. Illiteracy runs at more than 70 percent.
> > 
> > In “Les Misérables” Victor Hugo described war with the poor as one between the “egoists” and the “outcasts.” The egoists, Hugo wrote, had “the bemusement of prosperity, which blunts the sense, the fear of suffering which is some cases goes so far as to hate all sufferers, and unshakable complacency, the ego so inflated that is stifles the soul.” The outcasts, who were ignored until their persecution and deprivation morphed into violence, had “greed and envy, resentment at the happiness of others, the turmoil of the human element in search of personal fulfillment, hearts filled with fog, misery, needs, and fatalism, and simple, impure ignorance.”
> > 
> > The belief systems the oppressed embrace can be intolerant, but these belief systems are a response to the injustice, state violence and cruelty inflicted on them by the global elites. Our enemy is not radical Islam. It is global capitalism. It is a world where the wretched of the earth are forced to bow before the dictates of the marketplace, where children go hungry as global corporate elites siphon away the world’s wealth and natural resources and where our troops and U.S.-backed militaries carry out massacres on city streets. Egypt offers a window into the coming dystopia. The wars of survival will mark the final stage of human habitation of the planet. And if you want to know what they will look like, visit any city morgue in Cairo.
> > 
> > This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/murdering-wretched-earth-1376648838. All rights are reserved.
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> >