U.S. journalist exposes further American moves against Iran

30 June 2008. A World to Win News Service. The American journalist Seymour Hersh has sounded the alarm about "a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence and congressional sources." Writing in the current issue of The New Yorker (7 July), this well-known antiwar journalist with long-standing high level sources in the U.S. government and especially the military revealed two main points about these new moves:

• The U.S. military (Special Operations Forces) have "significantly expanded" cross-border raids from Iraq into Iran since late last year, including kidnapping Iranian military officers (the Al-Quds arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard) and taking them to Iraq for "interrogation". The U.S. is also stepping up its covert work with armed ethnic and religious opposition forces within Iran.

• The expansion of this latter programme was secretly authorized "late last year" by the U.S. Congress leadership, now controlled by the Democratic Party, whose candidate Barack Obama claims to represent an alternative to the Bush regime's war policies.

U.S.-sponsored kidnapping, bombings and assassinations

Congressional leaders agreed to fund this covert escalation, Hersh says, after they were shown a highly classified document called a Presidential Finding signed by President George W. Bush, legally necessary to authorise a covert CIA programme. Bush claims that unlike the CIA, the U.S. military's Special Ops activities are not legally subject to Congressional oversight, so that it can be presumed that a major purpose of the Finding is to broaden CIA work with organisations and individuals within Iran. According to Hersh's sources, "the overall authority includes killing."

Hersh says that the U.S. is now going further than ever in fostering terrorist attacks on the Shia Islamic Iranian regime by minority groups in Iran, including Iranian Kurdish forces, Iranian Arabs and the most emphasized movement in this report, the Baluchi Sunni Islamist fundamentalist group Jundallah. The article describes this as a tactical alliance with  "Al-Qaeda" against the Iranian regime, since several Baluchi Sunnis were accused of spearheading the 11 September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, and these forces are very much linked to Taleban-allied Sunni Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan.

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Iran: March 8 organisation supports Iranian women students

30 June 2008. A World to Win News Service. Following are excerpts from a leaflet put out by the March 8 Women's Organization (Iran-Afghanistan) on 28 June. It was entitled, "Students around the world: support the protests of Iranian women students against sexual abuse by university-government authorities."

On 15 June, the courageous act of a female student provoked a powerful student protest in the University of Zanjan (320 kilometres northwest of Tehran) against this anti-woman current. The university vice-chancellor had asked her for sexual favours in return for ignoring her negative "morality records" with the Guardian Office of the University and the Disciplinary Committee. Being in a position of authority, a henchman of the Islamic regime officially certified as "faithful of the system", as the corrupt cronies of the power structure in Iran are called, he was too sure he would never be exposed.

But this time the "man of the system" was caught red-handed right in his "holy" office by students who videoed his not so "holy" sexual advance. The students immediately informed others in the campus and the protests began. Some 3,000 out of the 7,000 students at this university mounted various actions for several days, ending in a sit-in. Government officials quickly travelled to the city to keep the protests from spilling over to other campuses. The students demanded the immediate firing of this vice chancellor and the university's president (both cronies of [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad). The students also demanded immunity for the courageous female student who took a great risk to expose this scoundrel. Officials negotiating with the students agreed to all demands in return for an end to the protest. Hundreds of vigilant and alert students warned against ending the protest, but students supporting the so called "reform faction" of the regime helped trick the protesters into accepting the deal. Immediately after the students ended the strike, the police arrested the woman! The Zanjan prosecutor declared, "Exposing a sin is worse than committing it".

A year ago, at Razi University in Kermanshah (a Kurdish city in the west), the head of the Guardian Office was exposed for sexual abuse of a woman student. He was arrested and detained for three days, but she is still in prison for "investigation". Several months ago three female students at Sahand University in the city of Tabriz (the capital of the northern Azerbaijan province) exposed that various university officials, Guardian Office scoundrels and one of the university rectors had pressured them to become their sex slaves. The students of this university staged a successful strike that echoed around the country, forcing the equally scoundrel authorities to promise an "investigation".  But nothing happened.

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Iran: Some points on the Zanjan University incident

30 June 2008. A World to Win News Service. Events at Iran's Zanjan University two weeks ago shocked the whole country. Not because people were unaware of the kind of corruption and the abuses going on behind the Islamic codes imposed by the regime, but because this incident concentrated the Islamic Republic's essence. The subsequent developments were also shocking and beyond what the people of Iran, who are well familiar with the logic of the Islamic regime, could believe.

A woman student was brave enough to go up against all the threats of the so-called disciplinary committee and university authorities. She refused to give in to their demands and instead helped gather evidence to prove the corruption and abusive action of university vice-chancellor Hassan Madadi. An audio recording of his demanding sex from her was circulated. Tens of thousands of people saw the mobile phone video posted on YouTube showing students seizing him, turning him over to the authorities and demanding that he be charged. (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=01NPJ5McQW4) People informed each other by SMS and phone. Again not because people were surprised – many are aware of the dimension of this sort of corruption in this regime – but because they were glad to see that this time this criminal was caught red-handed and he and the government could not get away with it.

This news outraged students and 3,000 took part in protests. A flood of solidarity and support came from other university students. The university authorities, who were in a weak position, tried to end these demonstrations by giving false promises to meet the students' demand. Finally, members of the student Islamic Association associated with "reformers" such as ex-president Muhammad Khatami were determined to use these events to their advantage in their factional fight within the state, compromised to keep the student movement from getting out of their hands and to advance their own factional programme within the government.

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Chhattisgarh, India: "Free Binayak Sen, T.G. Ajay and other political prisoners!"

19 May 2008. A World to Win News Service.  A worldwide campaign is emerging to demand the freedom of Dr Binayak Sen, a public health doctor and human rights campaigner in the impoverished Indian state of Chhattisgarh who has now spent a year in prison, accused of aiding the rural rebellion led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist). The paediatrician distanced himself from the politics of armed revolution, but refused to stop exposing and denouncing the oppression and injustice practiced against the adivasis (tribal people). He has been particularly vocal against the authorities' attempts to unleash counterrevolutionary terror in the countryside through the state-sponsored paramilitaries called the Salwa Judum.

Support has particularly swelled during the past few weeks, with a dynamic relationship developing between prominent figures on an international level and local activists. On 14 May, to mark the anniversary of Sen's arrest, the Chhattisgarh People's Union for Civil Liberties staged a day-long dharna (sit-in) in Raipur, where he is being held. "About 450 citizens (workers, peasants, youth, women, intellectuals and political party workers, etc.) participated in the event," reported the group's press release. Sen is the organisation's national vice-president and head of the Chhattisgarh state unit. In the city of Kolkotta (formerly Calcutta), on the same day, nearly 150 doctors, people's health activists, human rights campaigners and others held a convention at the Medical College to demand his release. Another mass meeting was organised across from the Madras Medical College in Chenai. New Delhi, Bangalore and about a half dozen other cities saw Free Benayak film festivals.

Also on 13-14 May, protests were held outside of Indian consulates in London, New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Vancouver, while vigils and other gatherings happened in numerous European and North American cities.

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The cyclone disaster in Myanmar and the human tragedy of global capitalism
 
19 May 2008. A World to Win News Service. The following article signed by Li Onesto is from the issue dated 25 May of Revolution, newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.

On May 2, 2008, Cyclone Nargis swept through the country of Myanmar, leaving in its wake a catastrophic human disaster. Deaths are estimated as high as 100,000 people, and at least one million are now homeless. Entire towns and villages have been washed away. About 10,000 people died in one coastal town alone.

The densely populated Irawaddy Delta of 6 million people, with many fishing communities, was hit hard. Yangon (the former capital) on the edge of the Delta, where another 6.5 million people lived, was completely flooded. Flimsy houses in the poor shantytowns around cities were demolished. Some 24 million people in the five disaster-hit states – almost half of Myanmar's population of 57 million – were affected by the cyclone with its 120 mph winds and 12-foot waves that surged up to seven miles inland.

Even areas not hit as hard are now running out of food and water. Crops, livestock, and fish have been ruined, along with irrigation systems, rice mills, and storage barns. The areas hit by the cyclone make up half of the irrigated farmland in Myanmar – which had produced 65 percent of Myanmar's rice. Millions of people who survived are now facing hunger, disease and lack of shelter.

 

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Revolutionary 1 May in Berlin

5 May 2008. A World to Win News Service. Many sharply contested battles occurred around the world on May Day this year. In Hamburg and Nuremberg, Germany, there were counter-demonstrations against neo-Nazi National Democratic Party rallies, which ended in cars being set ablaze and stones and bottles hurled as the police attacked with water canons and pepper spray. Some 7,000 and 1,000 people took part, respectively.  Several anti-Nazi demonstrators were arrested. We received the following report from Berlin.

Several hundred people (starting with around 800 people and ending with about 400) marched through a working class and immigrant neighbourhood of Berlin to celebrate a “revolutionary 1 May”.

This revolutionary march through Kreuzberg has been held since 1997. Other actions occurred the night before and later that day.

The demonstration was preceded by a rally where representatives of communist and revolutionary organisations and parties gave their views on the world situation. They addressed the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and the dangerous military threats against Iran. The coalition emcee started by talking about the revolutionary history of May Day and the work done in organising this year’s activities. The preparations leading up to the march were seen as a political campaign to promote revolutionary consciousness among secondary school and university students and the lower strata of society living in the immigrant and working class neighbourhoods. Around 30,000 leaflets of the call for the 1 May demonstration were distributed among these sections of the people.

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Is it acceptable for the U.S. to “totally obliterate” Iran?

5 May 2008. A World to Win News Service.  U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s recent threat to “totally obliterate” Iran was truly alarming, not just for what she said, but for what didn’t happen: for the firestorm of condemnation and repudiation that didn’t take place, either in Washington or any other Western capital. Even her rival for the Democratic Party nomination, Barack Obama, confined himself to gently chiding her for a poor choice of words – “It’s not the language we need right now.” What he didn’t say, and what no American politician likely to have a voice in the matter did not say either, is that what she is threatening is genocide, that genocide is a crime, and that even threats of genocide are unacceptable.

 Clinton’s shocking threat revealed a great deal more than her own ambitions. It brought to light a certain mood in Washington as a whole, a consensus that Iran is a threat to American interests and that the U.S. should plan for and carry out whatever it takes to achieve political goals they all agree on.

So much for the idea that Bush’s impending exit from the White House might lessen the danger of an attack on Iran, before or after he leaves office.

Last November, a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran was probably no longer engaging in a nuclear weapons programme. The public release of that document indicated unease about the advisability of attacking Iran and contention within the ranks of those who make such decisions. But the situation has evolved somewhat since then. Ironically, as the stated end of Bush’s term in office appears on the horizon, it seems that the strategic assessment he made, in, for instance, his 10 April speech, has been broadly accepted among those who make such decisions. “Iraq is the convergence point of the two greatest threats to America in this century: Al Qaeda and Iran.”

 

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Nepal: Expectations for profound change soar to the sky

14 April 2008. A World to Win News Service.  On April 10 elections were held in Nepal for the first time in nine years. Final results are not yet available, but initial returns show that the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) is doing very well, with a real possibility of winning a majority in the Constituent Assembly (CA) that is being elected. There is widespread jubilation at the victory of the CPN(M) in many corners of the country among the people who are hoping that this election victory will open the door to a “new Nepal” and a way out of poverty and oppression. The voters clearly rejected the main political parties of the ruling classes in Nepal, especially the Nepal Congress Party which headed most of the governments that fought viciously against the people’s war in that country, and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), a party which despite its name long ago gave up on communism and also participated in fighting against the revolution. The few forces openly supporting the continuation of the monarchy also did very poorly.

The role of the Constituent Assembly is to begin a process of drafting a new constitution for a republic, a process which is expected to last one or two years.

This was not an ordinary election. For ten years, beginning in 1996, the CPN(M) waged a people’s war centred in the countryside of Nepal whose goal was to carry out a New Democratic Revolution and free the country from imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. Two years ago a massive movement swept the urban areas of the country as well, forcing the widely hated King Gyanendra to step back from absolute power and reconvene parliament into which a significant representation of CPN(M) was co-opted.

International observers from many countries, including former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and Ian Martin, head of the UN mission to Nepal, were fulsome in their praise for the electoral process, particularly that it was more “peaceful” than expected. First reactions to the elections from the “international community” hailed them as the definitive end of the people’s war.  How they will react to a resounding electrical victory of the CPN(M) is not yet clear.

 

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Nepal: the Dang massacre of Maoist supporters

14 April 2008. A World to Win News Service.  On the evening of 7 April, the Nepali press initially reported that Maoist members of the Young Communist league (YCL) ambushed Nepali Congress Party candidate Khum Bahadur Khadka in the city of Dang, surrounding his car and opening fire. Seven YCLers were killed and 25 wounded. According to the Kathmandu Post, Khadka “somehow dodged bullets”, and one media report described a “15 minute long exchange of fire” between the two sides. A “government source” told the Kathmandu Postthat “police fired over 80 rounds as Maoist cadres fired at them indiscriminately.”

Dang is located in the southwest of Nepal, a historic hotspot during the years of the people’s war. It is the city closest to the historic base areas of Rolpa and Rukum. Emotions were running particularly high in the election campaign, as the area was the scene of repeated intense clashes between the Maoist guerrillas and Royal Nepal Army in 2003. The city itself was the last outpost of the old state before reaching the liberated area, and was a concentration point for military special forces, secret police and foreign intelligence.

 The news reports of these killings took place in the midst of a storm of denunciations of the Maoists for violence, even though the Maoists were the party that suffered the most deaths by far during the course of the election campaign (seven Maoists and one UML member were killed before the Dang massacre), mainly at the hands of the police. Nepal’s newspapers waged a relentless campaign to associate the Maoists with violence against peaceful democratic candidates, portraying them as little more than thugs and gangsters – creating public opinion to justify police action against them. The Kathmandu Post headlined its front page only four days before the election, “Young Communist League rampage unrelenting” and “Maoists lead in attacks on rival parties”.

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Still no justice for U.S. political prisoner Mumia

31 March 2008. A World to Win News Service. Following is a slightly edited article from the issue dated 6 April of Revolution, voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. Demonstrations in support of Mumia are planned for 19 April in Philadelphia and other cities.

A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals handed down its decision on the case of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal 27 March. By a vote of two to one, the appeals court let stand Mumia’s original conviction, but upheld a lower court decision that overturned his death sentence because of a misleading jury verdict form.

This decision continues the 27-year railroad of a Black revolutionary writer and activist, framed by the infamous racist court system of Philadelphia. Mumia Abu-Jamal has been held in isolation on Pennsylvania’s death row since his 1982 trial that was a travesty of justice.

This latest development in Mumia’s case is serious and dangerous. Not only has Mumia’s appeal been turned down by a federal appeals court, the state of Pennsylvania could take this as a green light to  try again to get a death sentence against him by correcting the “error” in the original trial.

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The failed offensive against Sadr’s Mahdi Army: the U.S, Iraq and Iran

31 March 2008. A World to Win News Service. Worse and worse – these are the words that come to mind about what the U.S. has accomplished in Iraq as its occupation heads into its sixth year. The offensive against the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, resulting, so far, in a humiliating defeat for the American-backed government, is another sign of increasing U.S. desperation – and dangerousness.

U.S. domination of Iraq has rested on two political pillars, in addition to the currently 160,000 American soldiers: the Kurdish parties and the Shia clerical and political establishment. Over the last year, since this set-up hasn’t been working, and faced with other necessities, the U.S has begun to shake those two pillars. Turkey’s incursions into Iraqi Kurdistan, with unequivocal U.S. military and political support, undermined and intimidated the two clan-based Kurdish nationalist parties that have been the U.S.’s most reliable allies. At the same time, the U.S. has often simply ignored the government of Prime Minister Maliki, which is held up by both these two pillars. It has organized the so-called “Awakening” movement, under which Sunni tribal leaders (once a core support for Saddam Hussein) and former Saddam officers have been bought and directly brought into the U.S. command structure, as if the Maliki government and Iraqi army didn’t even exist. Some 80,000 such men were put on the U.S. payroll in 2007. Now these moves have been followed by the assault on Sadr’s forces.

That the attack was backed by the U.S. is not really in doubt. U.S. President Bush endorsed it right away, calling Maliki’s offensive “bold”, “a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq” and “a necessary part of the development of a free society.” (New York Times, 29 March) U.S. Vice President Cheney visited Iraq less than a week before the offensive, about the time when preparations began. He must have discussed the matter with Maliki, since the relationship between the Sadr movement and the government was considered the question of the day in Baghdad. Further, despite some attempts to make it look otherwise, it seems that American air and ground forces did much of the fighting against the Mahdi Army. Although government troops helped surround Sadr City, the Shia slum area in the capital named for Moqtada al-Sadr’s famous cleric father, on-the-spot reporting by Sudarsan Raghavan for The Observer (30 March) describes the street by street fighting as being almost exclusively between Mahdi Army members and American soldiers, with frequent helicopter gunship support.

In Basra, where Maliki went to personally oversee the invasion of Sadr-friendly neighbourhoods, the combat quickly became a stalemate. American aircraft and British artillery killed many, if not most, of the civilians and fighters reported to have died. Washington confirmed that its special forces operated on the ground in Basra. (Reuters, 30 March) Fighting took place in many other cities in the south, where thousands of Mahdi Army members from Baghdad fled or were redeployed in the face of American military pressure there.

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Quetta, Pakistan: Afghan women celebrate International Women’s Day

17 March 2008. A World to Win News Service. On the occasion of International Women’s Day, the 8 March Women’s Detachment of Afghanistan held a meeting in Quetta, a city in northern Pakistan near the Afghanistan border, to commemorate the founding of this day of protest a century ago and condemn the worsening violence against women in Afghanistan. The mass meeting was held with the active cooperation of another Afghan group, the Revolutionary Youth Movement. More than 800 people filled the hall and another 200 could not get in because there was no more room.

Most of the participants were women and girls, most of whom were students. Among the male participants, the majority were students as well. The young women speakers from the two organisations made presentations about the deteriorating situation for women in Afghanistan under the U.S.-led occupation.

Afghanistan has become one of the worst places in the world in terms of violence against women. In addition to suffering from the general atmosphere of insecurity, they have been raped and kidnapped by the armed forces. They are the victims or threatened victims of rape in the prisons and women’s shelters. They face death by stoning for non-Islamic behaviour. They also suffer violence in their home and from their family, such as beating and murder by their husbands and so-called honour killings at the hands of male family members. Not only has the occupation of the country by the U.S. and its allies in the name of liberating women not improved the situation; in many aspects, in particular regarding the violent oppression of women, things have gotten wors

 

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Report from 8 March celebration in Los Angeles 

17 March 2009. A World to Win News Service.  The following was based on a report from the 8 March Women’s Organisation, Iran - Afghanistan (www.8mars.com) and other sources. It also includes material from Revolution, voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (revcom.us).

A celebration of International Women’s Day in Los Angeles drew a highly diverse crowd of about 300 people. The enthusiastic march started from a busy square and went through different areas of the city, including the Westwood neighbourhood where many Iranians live. The chanting, sign-carrying multinational demonstrators included older Iranian refugees, teenage Iranian-American women, college students, feminists of various nationalities, garment workers, Aztec (Native American) dancers and immigrants from other countries.

The event was coordinated by The Committee of U.S. Women and the 8 March Women’s Organisation. The central slogan was “No to the fundamentalist anti-women Islamic regime of Iran! And no to U.S. imperialism”. Among slogans were “Women in Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq need no imperialists for their liberation” and “Long live international solidarity.”
 
This demonstration was in support of the International Women’s Day march in Brussels organized by Karzar (Women’s Campaign for the Abolition of all Misogynist and Gender-Based Legislation and Islamic Punitive Laws against Women in Iran).

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Report on 8 March in Brussels

10 March 2008. A World to Win News Service. More than 1,000 people, the vast majority of them women, took part in a march in the streets of Brussels on Saturday 8 March to celebrate International Women’s Day. Women and men from Belgium, Iran, Turkey, Kurdistan and Afghanistan, as well as Nepal, Iraq, North Africa and other European countries, joined together to protest the oppression of women in all its forms, from the denial of basic rights under Islamic regimes and in other countries where women are punished for behaviour not permitted by religion, to the Western countries where women have gained legal equality, to one degree or another, but are still oppressed by the system and culture of capitalism.

This march was organised by the Iranian group Karzar  (Women’s Campaign for the Abolition of all Misogynist and Gender-Based Legislation and Islamic Punitive Laws against Women in Iran), in cooperation with the Belgian Left Socialist Party. It was also supported by a Kurdish group from Turkey, which joined the demonstration.

The march began with a rally in front of the U.S. embassy, passed by the European Parliament and ended in front of the embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. At the start, women of different nationalities condemned U.S. war mongering and its anti-women nature. Among other speakers, a woman from Iraq and another from Afghanistan talked about the deteriorating situation for women under the U.S.-led occupations. These speeches exposed the hypocrisy of American claims to have grabbed these countries to liberate women and bestow democracy upon the people.

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Maoist Communist Party of Italy on International Women’s Day

10 March 2008. A World to Win News Service. The following declaration by the Maoist Communist Party of Italy is from the publication Proletari Comunisti.

Throughout Italy, proletarian women and the feminist movement will demonstrate in a thousand different forms, from strikes by women workers to street demonstrations in defence of the right to abortion and all women’s rights now under attack by the bourgeoisie, its governments and its parties. They confront attacks on their living and working conditions because they lack job security and are the first to be sacked and become unemployed. They fight the high cost of living, and cuts in social services that make their lives even more difficult and subject them to a double oppression. They fight intensifying sexual violence within the family that arises from new and old forms of domination and male chauvinist-patriarchal oppression; they fight against the clerical fascist attack on the right to abortion inspired by Pope Ratzinger and supported in various ways by the parties of the centre-left as well as the centre-right.

Hundreds of thousands of women have demonstrated against all this, most recently last 24 November. They have isolated and thrown out of their marches the phoney “left” women ministers of the Prodi government and the centre-right parties. For this they have been attacked as “violent” or even “terrorists”.

The reformist forces and leaders of the middle and petty bourgeoisie have tried to make this movement compatible with the system during the big assembly of 12 January and the two days of workshop meetings in February, but the majority of women and feminist organizations, among them many young women, have rejected this embrace.

From the start women have found in the Revolutionary Proletarian Feminist Movement a point of reference which can defend and support their most radical just causes and fight to unite women workers and proletarians and the feminist movement so as to advance the struggle and their consciousness and organization.

This has brought new forces into the proletarian and revolutionary tendency in the women’s movement.

This advance confirms, in the furnace of class struggle and closely linked to the masses, the ability of the proletarian communists of the Maoist Communist Party in Italy to make a concrete analysis of the concrete situation, to develop the mass line, to identify and develop the concrete path to unleash the fury of the women as a powerful force for revolution in an imperialist country such as Italy.

Phoney communist groups and parties, on the contrary, develop a dogmatic and opportunistic line, a doctrinaire Marxism and revisionist practice which separates them from the masses of women and contributes to the persistence and hegemony of revisionist, reformist and petty bourgeois feminism within the women’s movement.

Hail 8 March, the international day of the struggle of women! Hail the centenary of 8 March!
Woman, don’t stop fighting, everything in life must change! Unleash the fury of women as a mighty force for revolution!
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U.S. elections: Barack Obama, the “best face” for U.S. imperialism?

10  March 2008. A World to Win News Service. The following is from the 3 February issue of Revolution, voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. (http://revcom.us)  It appeared along with an article exposing Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama’s rival for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, for, among other things, upholding white supremacy, including in her attacks on Obama. 

In an article in the December issue of The Atlantic, commentator Andrew Sullivan argues that Barack Obama should be the next president of the United States (“Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters,” December 2007). Sullivan writes that a (ruling class) “consensus” agenda for endless war and increased repression will be in effect regardless of who is president. He challenges the reader to pick who could best implement all this in the face of global isolation and profound domestic alienation. And, in the process, he sheds light on the real role of elections in this society.

Those who are willing to listen in on a ruling class insider’s case for Obama, read on.

Civics 101: Your vote for president “has little to do with” basic policy decisions

First, a note on Andrew Sullivan’s credentials: Sullivan writes columns for the New York Times, Time magazine, and is a regular on the political talk shows. He is a senior editor at The Atlantic magazine. Sullivan’s defining political legacy was his tenure as editor of The New Republic, where he counted among his big achievements the promotion of the book The Bell Curve, a completely ridiculous but highly influential pseudoscientific book that claimed that Black people are genetically inferior to whites. The New Republic under his editorship played a key role in – in his words – “helping to torpedo the Clinton administration’s plans for universal health coverage.” A conservative who has differences with Christian fundamentalism (Sullivan is openly gay), he invokes Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as models.

And yes, he is supporting Barack Obama for president.

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The horrors for women in the “modern” world of global capitalism

 

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On Turkey’s invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan