Sunday, November 30, 2008

A system on the edge

A system on the edge by Lee Sustar on International Socialist Review (isreview.org).

The Democrats will step into this situation to once again take the role they have played historically—adapting to popular pressure to make some modest reforms on one side, while rationalizing and restructuring capital on the other. Whether or not the “change” promised by Obama becomes a reality will depend on the level of organization, political consciousness and struggle of working people. In the near term, the initial shock of a deep recession may delay a fightback. But with social inequality in the U.S. already at its greatest level since the 1920s, and an utter failure of neoliberal ideology and politics, the stage is set for heightened class struggle. It’s time to get prepared.

10 comments:

Samson said...

This of course is why the various 'liberal' Dem sites on the web cracked down on comments. Now that the election is over, the left and the working class become the enemies of the Democrats. And they know it.

The Democrats Plan A is to give money to their big contributors. In this they are just like the Republicans. This is why the Democrats and the Republicans stand side by side and insist that our money has to flow to Citibank and Goldman Sachs, etc.

You can see the Democrats Plan A in their choices for Administration positions. Lots of Republicans. Lots of pro-business, pro-corporate types. Lots of people who favor war and torture and cracking down on the public with a police state. This whole list of appointments shows the Democrats Plan A.

The key is to move them to something a little closer to decent by organizing and making a lot of noise and making life as painful as possible for the Democrats. Only then will they start to move away from their Plan A towards something we'd want to see.

The left and the working class were viewed as allies by the Democrats in the last election. Or maybe more accurately, they were viewed as voting blocks they needed to win, so they put forward the appearence of being allies to the left and the working class.

But, now that the election is passed, the Democrats know that the left and the working class is one of the biggest areas of opposition they can expect as they try to rule like neo-Republicans.

So, you'll see a fair amount of effort from the Democrats in trying to knock this down. You'll see efforts like the ones at CommonDreams to disrupt places where people are coming together in opposition. You'll see a fair amount of propaganda aimed at the left, like many of the articles now on CD these days, which will try to reassure the lef that all is well. You'll see a lot of hype for the small handful of bones that get tossed this way.

The key is to do this. To organize and come together. To make our voices heard NOW! Not in waiting to give the Obama administration a long honeymoon before we speak out, but now.

And to start to organize for the next election. If you want to get the Democrats attention, start building strong progressive 3rd party campaigns for the 2010 mid-term elections.

If the Democrats see the combination of a loud opposition from them the left that is also organizing strongly for the next elections, that's what will move the Democrats off their pro-corporate, pro-wall street Plan A and more into something we might like.

Anonymous said...

And I'm still banned from Commondreams.org without the anonymizing service. By the way, did you notice that when someone brings up an issue on the "conservative", not moderate, Muslims, he or she gets flamed? Also, did you notice that all too often on that site, users calling for banning?

Anonymous said...

FrederickJohnson (& all CD refugees) --

Here's how to get around CD's stupid & pathetic ban. (I'm not sure that it's really worth doing, because the posters left on CD after the purge are mostly the timid ones who didn't have the guts to tell the truth about the Democrats.) But FWIW, here is how to do it:

Go to certainyproxy.com. Enter "www.commondreams.org" (without the quotes) into the box, and click the 'browse' button. This takes you to CD. When you get there, there's a big box at the top that automatically already has "http://www.commondreams.org" in it. Leave the boxes marked "Accept Cookies" and "Show Images" checked; and uncheck the others. Then click the "Go" button to the right of the big box at the top.

After that, you can access CD and post to it. They can't tell what IP you're writing from. BWAh-hahaha!

Anonymous said...

RichM,

Great idea. However, when I go back there and check out the comments, it's like so grouped up and then with new idiots like "Joe Hope". If you read a lot of JH's very childish posts, you'd probably be saying "Oh man, I'd smack him if I could". I guess I could do all that but at this point, I'm pretty much seeing it less often since they're putting more useless crappy articles. I say let CD die off. I'm going to start signing up on the other progressive/liberal sites that don't censor and maybe I'll warn others not to contribute money to that site. We need to PUNISH CD by bleeding them dry. I'm already using plain old anonymouse.org just to view it on the occasion but the comments aren't worth replying to. Besides, since I notice certain users only replying to certain users (usually they know each other for a long time and could very well be sock puppets for all I know) while most newcomers get ignored unless they say something very blatant such as "blow up pakistan". I beginning to think it is high time I put forth efforts towards improving the audience on this blog site. We need real progressives and liberals to have a voice and not fascist phonies that put everyone to tears.

KDelphi said...

Rich and Frederick--Iam going to try it again. (I cant post yet) I wish we could all just "go in" at once, and "go along" and then say "surprise, a-holes!" Sorry--I am just really disappointed,...seriously! Even I had higher hopes for Obama's team!

I read "Joe Hope"----jeez,,,,

There's UltraSurf...

Actually, isnt there an attorney on here? What they are doing , by even blocking articles, is highly questionable under 501 (c) (3). They are not entirely "private"--they took $154,000 in taxpayer money last year! (Their tax returns are available online! They are public info!) They have an "educational mandate" and are not "allowed to back any one candidate or party". I can give links...I just dont know what to do with them,..of course, there are so many more.I just run into people everyday--more and more--banned, and it is pissing me off.

Nebraska Nathan said...

Hi everyone,

I got my access back, well sort of. I had to sign in as Nebraska Nathan1 but at least I can post and so far these past 1.5 weeks I'm ok. There are people on CD who are missing you folks and are crying for a real conversation out there. Joe Hope is nothing but a Republican Obama plant. I may have supported Obama but not to the blind extent Joe Hope does. I think he's being used as bait to ban those who attack him when the post replies disagreeing with his profound idiocity.

Fred is correct that there really hasn't been much worth reading for the most part since the election ended. As far as I am concerned, even if Obama selected a better set of people for cabinet posts, he's still got to face Congress plus the possibility of the high courts even if Congress agrees with him on a pro-people's policy but the corporate interests don't. Trust me, even in FDR's time, the corporate interests could always count on the high courts to cause trouble.

Fred, Carla Waters did make a very disgusting remark about the need to wipe out the Afghans accusing them of not standing up to the Taliban. She may be correct that Muslims often unite and don't question their brothers and sisters even when they commit terrorist acts and she may be correct that blowing up business buildings is not going to help the poor but instead empower the neocons. However, she did sound a bit too cruel on the issue.

On the bright side, when some people went out complaining on the forums, some called for her to be banned immediately but amazingly a lot of other users spoke against the need to flag and ban users. One user noted that Carla Waters was generally not a fringe lunatic but went bonkers on the terrorist attack in Mumbai just like we the people did on 9/11. In fact, I also saw her earlier posts in other topics where she discussed her childhood hell experiences when her then abusive father turned soft-hearted used to misuse religion to justify domestic abuse. She and her mother turned atheists thereafter. The people who spoke against the idea of banning users made valid points such as the need to allow these users to stay so that in time, they'll learn and be less likely to spread hate. One of the users even associated banning with the death penalty. I myself don't see how CD expects people to turn progressive. If all they want is their site to be filled with more doom and gloom but no room for discussion and even reforming people who show hate due to misunderstanding the crisis such as Carla Waters probably not knowing the actual plight in Afghanistan, then can you imagine more progressive/liberal sites doing the same kind of censorship and turning people away? This would make it very easy for conservative Republicans to woo over these disaffected people. Believe me, I've met rednecks who would have been liberal but felt left out because the Democrat would spend more time talking about gun control and abortion than focusing his or her efforts on redefining foreign policy beyond wars and free trade.

Nebraska Nathan said...

Fred and KDelphi,

I'm not sure if CD can be held accountable. However, we need to make sure that other progressive/liberal sites don't end up copying CD, Dkos, and Huffpost in terms of censorship and even banning.

KDelphi said...

Nebraska--I'm only commenting on one thing, because I am in pain with an infection--not a big deal, but GAWD they hurt!

Not ignoring the rest of your post (although, allowing one person "freedom of speech" that we are all supposed to have is not really cause for celebration in my book), but, other sites have been doing it , too. Democracy Underground,Dems own website,HuffPo and The Nation already censor, even MoJo occasionalyu ...I was gonna list all of them--one of Nader's supporters on truth dig posted them---they are all linked. That is the scary problem. I will list them tomorrow--maybe someone has them? I cant sit here very long..

BTW--My brother in law is an attorney, and while, he says it probably wouldnt be worth it (esp. since Craig Brown and his other billionaire friends in Portland, would get a BETTER lawyer team), they are nonetheless, breaking their agreement with the taxpayers by taking tax money.

It bothers me so much, not, just so "i can post", (I am not trying to sound lofty here, folks), but I hear so many young people that think that "this is just the way it is"--now I am not baby boom--but I remember it in my single digit years--and it was NOT always like this! The media did NOT always capitulate to the P or PE! There was a question yesterday to PE Obama re: Hillary, and he said, "Now youre playing games..." or something--it was a legitimate question!! If he becomes the "Obfiscator in Chief" like Bush , only for neo-liberals, we're just going to become more fascist...and I think we need to STOP IT! if we can...lol..now I wil go drink cranberry juice...

Samson said...

I occaisionally scan the CD site looking for articles to link to. But to be honest, I don't find it all that interesting these days. Even before the election, the selection of articles had become rather lame, and I mainly was there more to read the comments. It was ok to read a lame Democrat article knowing the comment section would be fun when you got down to it. Now, its just kinda boring to me.

That said, I did just post\link to an article there talking about single payer. Linking to their articles so there could be a discussion here was one of the ideas I had when I started this site. Its just that to me good articles are rare over there.

If anyone spots an article they want to comment on here, just put it into a comment somewhere and when I get a chance I'll go set up a link to it.

Samson said...

The funny part is that their IP blocking is only partially effective, and has some consequences to them that are probably unintended.

At home, my IP address changes dynamically when I connect to my ISP. So, when they blocked that, all I did was reset the router and I was back on.

The unintended consequence there is that someone else in my progressive intown Denver neighborhood probably gets that old IP address and is now blocked.

At work, I think everything goes through one company IP address, which CD blocked. Me, I get around it with tricks like anonymouse.

But, the unintended consequence is that CD just blocked anyone at an entire high tech company with thousands of employees from seeing their site. The company is based in CA, and has a fair number of people I'd call 'progressive'. Now none of them can read CD articles.