#us

Richard D. Wolff & Michael Hudson: Is US Policy Saving the Dollar o...
▻https://diasp.eu/p/17121668

Richard D. Wolff & Michael Hudson: Is US Policy Saving the Dollar or Destroying It? - YouTube — ▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU1uxkZUFb0

#RDWolff #MHudson #usa

Militärputsch in Chile am 11.9.1973. Chilenische Kommunist:innen im Exil in der DDR - Migrationsgeschichten
▻https://migrations-geschichten.de/chilenische-kommunisten-im-exil-in-der-ddr

https://migrations-geschichten.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Schallplatte-Solidtaitaet-mit-Chile.-VEB-Schallplatten-Berlin-1973-Venceremos-und-El-pueblo-unido-Lidfestival-des-politischen-liedes-300x298.jpg

Il y a 51 ans la tentative d’établir une société juste et socialiste au Chili est étouffée dans le sang par la petite et grande bourgeoisie nationale et le militaire du pays avec le soutien des États Unis. Depuis des situation comparables se répètent au Nicaragua, au Vénézuela, en Lybie et dans le monde entier. N’oublions pas l’histoire d’avant avec la guerre de Corée, du Vietnnam et l’extermination d’un million de communistes supposés en Indonésie en 1965, tous pour servir les intérêts de la classe capitaliste des #USA .

L’Allemagne socialiste a été une terre d’acceuil et un partenaire solidaire pour les rescapés des coups d’état fascistes. La solidarité internationale n’a pas été un mot vide se sens.

Hasta la victoria. Siempre Patria o Muerte !

https://cubanews.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Das-Original-des-Che-Briefs_Cubanews-de-e1581190852531.jpg

Der Putsch in Chile 1973

Bis 1970 waren die formellen Beziehungen der DDR zu Chile eher gering. Doch mit der Machtübernahme des demokratisch gewählten marxistisch-sozialistischen Präsidenten Salvador Allende im Oktober 1970 (unterstützt durch das Linksbündnisses Unidad Popular), rückte Chile auf der politischen Agenda der DDR weiter nach oben.

Die tiefgreifenden sozialen und ökonomischen Reformen Allendes führten in Chile zu einer Polarisierung. Allendes Regierungszeit war zunehmend geprägt durch politische Konfrontationen, die in einer Eskalation endete. Im Morgengrauen des 11. Septembers 1973 begann der Putsch der Streitkräfte Chiles, in dessen Verlauf die demokratisch gewählte Regierung Chiles gestürzt wurde. Das in den Präsidentenpalast eindringende Militär fand Allende mit einer Schusswunde im Kopf tot auf. Maßgeblich am Putsch beteiligt war der chilenische General Augusto Pinochet. Vom 11. September 1973 an regierte er Chile bis zum 11. März 1990 diktatorisch, zunächst als Vorsitzender einer Militärjunta, später als Präsident. Er wurde nie demokratisch gewählt.

Unmittelbar nach dem Putsch gab es die meisten Opfer. Allein am 11. September wurden 2.131 Menschen aus politischen Gründen verhaftet, bis Ende des Jahres 1973 waren es 13.364. Opfer waren vor allem Mitglieder und Sympathisanten von Regierung, Linksparteien und Gewerkschaften.
„Solidaritätsmaßnahmen“. Aufnahme politischer Geflüchteter aus Chile in der DDR

Bereits am 25. September 1973, zwei Wochen nach Pinochets Putsch, beschloss das DDR-Politbüro „Solidaritätsmaßnahmen“ zur Aufnahme politischer Flüchtlinge aus Chile.

DDR-Staatschef Erich Honecker hatte unmittelbar nach dem Militär-Putsch durch General Pinochet in Chile am 11. September 1973 erklärt, dass die DDR verfolgten Chilenen Asyl bietet. In den folgenden Monaten und Jahren kamen rund 2.000 chilenische Flüchtlinge in die DDR.
Das „Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos“ in Santiago de Chile ist dem Gedenken an die Opfer der Militärdiktatur unter Augusto Pinochet gewidmet.
Weltkarte im Museum, die zeigt, wohin Chilen:innen ins Exil gingen …
… auch nach Europa.

Asyl nur für chilenische Revolutionäre

Das Asyl in der DDR war kein universelles Recht für politisch Verfolgte aus Chile. Um Asyl in der DDR zu bekommen, brauchte es eine politische Prägung, die der DDR nahestand. Folglich wurden insbesondere Kommunist:innen (Partido Comunista) und Sozialist:innen (Partido Socialista) und der Unidad Popular zugehörige Chilen:innen aufgenommen. Kein Anrecht auf Asyl hatten dagegen Anhänger:innen der christlichen Parteien, die offensichtlich nicht als „ideologisch zuverlässig“ galten. Ebenso galt das für parteiferne Chilen:innen.

Der Weg in die DDR

Der Weg ins Exil war für viele Chilen:innen von Angst und Unsicherheit geprägt. Um die Flucht aus Chile zu schaffen, brauchte es häufig die Hilfe von Organisationen wie dem Hohen Flüchtlingskommissar der Vereinten Nationen (UNHCR) oder Amnesty International. Häufig gelang die Flucht in die DDR nur über Zwischenstationen in anderen Ländern, wobei ausländische Botschaften halfen. Wenn sie den Aufnahmekriterien entsprachen, konnten sie per Flugzeug einreisen. Am Flughafen Berlin Schönefeld wurden die Ankommenden erwartet und zur ersten Unterkunft gebracht.

Chilen:innen kommen in die DDR – Aufnahme

Die ersten zwei Monate verbrachten die chilenischen Neuankömmlinge zunächst in größeren Sammelstellen. Das waren zumeist Hotels oder Ferienheime des Freien Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes. Dort wurden sie medizinisch betreut und ihre Papiere in Ordnung gebracht. Ferner bekamen sie Deutschkurse und Schulungen. Danach verteilte man sie auf verschiedene Städte wie Halle, Dresden, Gera, Suhl, Cottbus, Leipzig und Rostock.

Die jeweiligen Bezirksräte hatte die schwierige Aufgabe, Wohnungen und „zumutbare“ Arbeitsstellen für die chilenischen Emigranten zu finden. Angesichts der chronischen Wohnungsnot und langer Wartelisten von Wohnungssuchenden war dies ein besonders schwieriges Unterfangen. Von oben hieß es, die Chilen:innen müßten bei der Bereitstellung von Wohnungen unbedingt bevorzugt werden – so schrieb es die internationale Solidarität vor. Bei der DDR-Bevölkerung führte dies mitunter zu Unmut, wenn z.B. die lang ersehnte und zugesagte Neubauwohnung nun chilenischen Emigranten gegeben wurde.

Dennoch liefen die Unterbringung und Eingliederung der Emigranten relativ unbürokratisch ab. Bis Dezember 1974 flossen insgesamt 9,6 Millionen Mark, zum großen Teil aus Mitteln des Freien Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes, in die Eingliederungsmaßnahmen der chilenischen Migrant:innen. So erhielt jede chilenische Familie mindestens 2.500 Mark Übergangsgeld, um die Zeit zu überbrücken, bis eine Arbeitsstelle für sie gefunden wurde. Das entsprach mehr als dem Dreifachen des durchschnittlichen Monatsverdienstes einer Arbeiterin in der DDR. Zur Einrichtung von Wohnungen gewährte die DDR langfristig zinslose Kredite, die in sehr niedrigen Raten (5% des Nettoeinkommens) abzuzahlen waren.

Wer kam?

Die chilenischen Kommunisten, die in die DDR kamen, waren nur zu einem geringen Teil aus der Arbeiterklasse. Es kamen vor allem gebildete, zur Mittelschicht gehörende Chilen:innen. Vor allem handelte es sich um Angehörige der Intelligenz, um ehemalige Funktionäre des Staats- und Parteiapparates sowie um Angestellte und Student:innen. Es kamen Künstler:innen, Lehrer:innen, Ingenieur:innen, Ärzt:innen und Anwält:innen.

Die Chilen:innen wurden schnell in das Arbeitsleben integriert, was zunächst nicht immer den Qualifikationen der Einzelnen entsprach. Viele mussten trotz hoher Bildungsabschlüsse in der Produktion arbeiten, z.B. am Fließband. Erst einmal mussten die Sprachkenntnisse verbessert werden, bevor das Arbeiten im eigentlichen Beruf oder ein Studium möglich war.

Coup Détat Chili 1973
▻https://pointcultures.blogspot.com/2020/12/coup-detat-chili-1973.html

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1024x576/p06kvwyz.jpg https://static.mediapart.fr/etmagine/default/files/media_500795/21-AllendeRally.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56a2e12069492eb24c37ab6a/1467427948908-02C91Y4C19PITHKQWL3M/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kL3VKmwKI3leYB51VJjLFB8UqsxRUqqbr1mOJYKfIPR7LoDQ9mXPOjoJoqy81S2I8KfHev97SxoG6nD17V2hYKLFhSPlVV71_Xhqg_adcQJMCGKnbR9illOuAlJB4WF-wqf-dBkTJOI6s5KHSw0AU1WgGg4miBTY-FQuIzqSSjXb/o9pmrq3.jpg?format=1500w https://soundsandcolours.com/static/2013/06/tortura-en-chile1-351x205.jpg https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/chile_protest_1973_ap_img.jpg

▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Observer/Pix/pictures/2013/9/6/1378498762478/Chilean-troops-make-arres-010.jpg?width=300&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max

▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2013/9/2/1378134947478/Chile-coup-1973-008.jpg?width=300&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=d

https://uchri.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/chile-sept-11.jpg https://images.radio-canada.ca/v1/ici-premiere/16x9/histo-allende-palais-presidentiel-chili.jpg

▻https://www.laizquierdadiario.com/IMG/arton137811.jpg

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jGcS8J3ghfg/V9ZtfZ0uvZI/AAAAAAABGh8/Y8lKdlrIK0k4lOhdZtIU2hj-5j0YIEiSQCLcB/s1600/7112974457_6587c8dd25_o.jpg IMG/distant/jpg/coupe-detat-02a0.jpg https://www.laculturegenerale.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/coupe-detat-chili-11-septembre-1973.jpg

Le groupe rock allemand a consacré au Chili l’album « Mumien » .

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51jpkzD-ccL.jpg

Floh de Cologne - Mumien
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvALkJrhOOQ

Widmung
Marsch Der Mumien I
Und Die Reichen
Marsch Der Mumien II
ITT Etc.
Oktober ’73
Frühling In Chile
00:00:00: Zeugen
00:00:00: Du Siehst Das Leid
00:00:00: Freiheitskämpfer
Salvador Allende
Gegen Den Hunger
Marsch Der Mumien III
Des Volkes Fesseln

Floh de Cologne Texte
▻https://lyricstranslate.com/en/floh-de-cologne-lyrics.html

▻https://cubanews.de/en/hasta-la-victoria-siempre-always-until-victory

#Chili #coup_d_état #1973 #socialisme #fascisme #résistance

Who’s Afraid of Mexican Democracy ?
▻https://jacobin.com/2024/09/sheinbaum-amlo-judicial-reform-us

Les États-Unis et les juges corrompus vcntre la réforme démocratique du système judiciaire du.Mexique

8.9.2024 by Kurt Hackbarth - Mexico’s judiciary is infamous for favoring oligarchs and other unsavory interests. MORENA’s judicial reforms aim to fix this by introducing democratic elections for judges — a move that has the US and global business elites in a panic.

Following its landslide victory in Mexico’s presidential elections, the MORENA coalition is wasting no time in getting to work. Even before president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum takes office on October 1, the new Congress is taking up a package of constitutional amendments proposed by outgoing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), flexing the muscle of a two-thirds qualified majority that allows the president’s party to pass such measures virtually on its own. And the first one up is already drawing the ire of corporate media and foreign powers alike: a judicial reform requiring direct, democratic elections for the entire federal judiciary.

On August 22, US Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar released a statement opposing the reforms. It was, to say the least, a curious one. After mentioning Iraq and Afghanistan — two countries the United States has recently invaded and occupied — as examples of countries that lack independent judiciaries, he proceeded to aver that “popular direct election of judges is a major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy.” Following the exposition came the threat: “I also think that the debate . . . will threaten the historic trade relationship we have built, which relies on investors’ confidence in Mexico’s legal framework.” If you know what’s good for you, in so many words, lay off.

AMLO, in fact, did not know what was “good for him.” “How are we going to allow the US ambassador, with all due respect . . . to opine that what we are doing is wrong?” he asked at his press conference the following Tuesday. While denying that the ambassador would be expelled, he explained that the relationship with the embassy was “on pause.” The same, he added, for the Canadian embassy, whose attitude in seconding the United States had been “pitiful . . . like a vassal state.” Both countries, he concluded, “would like to interfere in matters that only concern Mexicans. As long as I am here, I will not allow any violation of our sovereignty.” The battle lines had been drawn.
Ken’s U-Turn

The ambassador’s letter and accompanying press conference were all the more surprising in light of the fact that, two months prior, he had said the exact opposite. The judicial reform “is a Mexican decision,” he stated on June 13. “It is not our decision. We, the United States, cannot impose our opinions in those matters.” On July 24, he reaffirmed that “the model [of the reform] will be the decision of the Mexican government, of the Mexican legislature. I’m not going to get involved in what should be done.” Just days before his U-turn, he was still saying that the judicial reform represented “an opportunity to do good things,” and that the United States was “not in a position” to tell Mexico what to do.

Following his blunt club of a statement, Salazar continued to twist rhetorically in the wind. Faced with blowback not only from the president but from a public historically disinclined to look favorably on US interventionism, he first tried backing off, contending that his comments had been made in a “spirit of collaboration” as “partners,” and that he had “the greatest willingness” to dialogue on the issue. The faux détente, however, entirely missed the point that the judicial reform was not an issue for which “dialogue” with the United States was either requested or appropriate. Thus Salazar returned to the attack, doubling down on the Iraq and Afghanistan point in an interview for Milenio TV while asserting that the reform violated the “spirit of the USMCA agreement” — NAFTA’s replacement — knowing full well he could not say that it violated the actual agreement. By September 3, he had been reduced to arguing that well, yes, the United States also elects judges, but only at the state level (where most cases are tried) and only in a few states (actually forty-one, in whole or part), and that whether or not the press in attendance was “with him” or not, they were always welcome at the embassy.
Washington Calling

Such an abrupt volte-face in posture clearly was not hatched in Mexico City but in Washington. The question, of course, is by whom. In the absence of power emanating from the Joe Biden White House, other power centers within the federal government have been rushing to fill in the void, stepping over each other in the process.

As a consequence, Latin American policy in recent months has been all over the place. When Ecuador invaded the Mexican embassy in April in flagrant violation of international law, the tepid State Department response was subsequently “corrected” by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. In the case of the Venezuelan election in August, Antony Blinken rushed to congratulate right-wing candidate Edmundo González only for spokesperson Matthew Miller to walk it back a few days later. And now the Mexican ambassador — already the subject of a front-page New York Times hit piece in 2022 for supposedly getting “too close” to AMLO — has been forced to fall on his sword and contradict his own statements made within the course of a week.

One candidate is the Drug Enforcement Administration, which has been running an operation to smear AMLO through pliant media voices in response to his limiting of its powers on Mexican soil. Another is the Blinken hawks at the State Department or one of the other intelligence agencies. A more obvious source for the change in discourse, however, is the business community, which has long made use of friendly judges and abused legal proceedings such as amparo (a form of preliminary injunction) to further its own interests in strategic areas such as banking, mining, energy, and water and block legislation that would seek to regulate them. For all the lurid warnings of how a democratically elected judiciary would open the door to greater cartel influence, the genuine concern of multinationals is rather that it would close the door on monied interests, their bribes, and the historically cozy relationship they’ve enjoyed with justices that has virtually guaranteed decisions in their favor.

When AMLO fought to increase public control over Mexico’s energy sector in the face of a slew of amparos and lawfare, Salazar — a longtime advocate for big energy both in and out of government — was also trundled out to express his “serious concerns” and threaten that the United States’ differences on the matter “might not have a solution.” The law to rein in private energy was eventually thrown out by the Supreme Court in February in a contorted process that required the votes of just two of its eleven justices, on the grounds that it violated “free competition” and “sustainable development.” The ambassador-lobbyist had won. AMLO was determined that it would not happen again.
Judges Behaving Badly

The furor over the energy reform was just the tip of the iceberg. Even before turning into a machine for striking down laws (seventy-four so far during this administration) on the barest of pretexts, Mexico’s judiciary had already become infamous as a cocktail club characterized by excessive salaries, perks, ethics scandals, and nepotism at the service of the oligarchy and other unsavory interests. This has taken multiple forms, such as forgiving tax debts, as in the case of the 640 million peso (US$32 million) “adjustment” granted to Totalplay, the telecom company owned by Mexico’s third-richest person and notorious tax evader Ricardo Salinas Pliego. It has also taken the form of get-out-of-jail-free cards for wealthy suspects to walk away scot-free or, at worst, be sent home to face trials from comfortable house arrest; a macabre sport in Mexico has been waiting to see which new well-heeled individual will be sent through the revolving door, usually on Saturdays (hence the term sabadazo), when there is less media coverage and when government offices are closed.

Among the long list of high-profile beneficiaries are names such as Emilio Lozoya, accused of triangulating money from the Brazilian company Odebrecht to the 2012 campaign of Enrique Peña Nieto; Rosario Robles, accused of funneling millions in social development funds through universities in the Peña administration in what was known as the “Master Scam”; Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca, the former governor of Tamaulipas who had been stripped of his immunity to face money laundering and organized crime charges, only for the Supreme Court to step in and quash the procedure, allowing him to flee to Texas; and most recently, Mario Marín, the former governor of Puebla, accused of ordering the torture of journalist Lydia Cacho for revealing the story of his presumed participation in a child pornography and trafficking ring. The treatment of such notables is particularly galling in a context where thousands of Mexicans without adequate connections and bank balances languish for years on end in prison before their cases ever come to trial.

Making matters worse has been the erratic and underhanded behavior of the gowned class in recent months. In May, it was revealed that Norma Piña, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, had held a private meeting with magistrates from the Federal Electoral Tribunal together with Alejandro Moreno, the president of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party.

The meeting was doubly troubling: first, for involving a leader of the political opposition, and second, for including several of the very magistrates who would be deciding the validity of the upcoming 2024 presidential election. According to WhatsApp conversations leaked from the gathering, Piña explicitly introduced Moreno to the other guests as her “ally” and “friend.” Instead of resigning, which the seriousness of the conflict of interest easily warranted, Piña has led the charge against the judicial reform, in recent days even leading the Court to join a judicial-branch work stoppage in protest.

As if that were not enough, a pair of federal judges attempted to wield the amparo injunction against Congress itself, ordering it to freeze its consideration of the reform and, in the event it were approved, to refrain from sending it to the state legislatures for ratification — a ludicrous and patently illegal judicial overreach, in short, that only reinforced MORENA’s argument of the need for root-and-branch reform. In the midst of all this broke a scandal of Lourdes Mendoza, columnist for El Financiero newspaper, sending her column on the reform to Supreme Court justice Margarita Rios-Farjat for her “green light” — a timely reminder of the chummy relationship between the courts and the corporate press, all in the pursuit of common interests.
The Fear of a Good Example

As a first step toward cleaning up the courts, the judicial reform provides for direct elections for half of the federal judiciary in 2025, including the entire Supreme Court, and the other half in 2027. All current justices will be eligible to run. Elections will be nonpartisan, with a prohibition on the use of private financing; instead, candidates will be given free television and radio airtime to make their case. Technical committees will be set up in both houses of Congress to ensure that potential candidates meet basic requirements of education and experience. The terms of Supreme Court justices will be reduced from fifteen to twelve years. Gender parity will be enforced, together with a limit on excessive trial lengths. Excessive salaries, perks, and pensions will be eliminated. The use of the amparo to block anything and everything will be reined in. And, crucially, an independent oversight board will be established with powers to sanction, suspend, or even remove corrupt judges from the bench.

And while the judicial reform has become a lightning rod, it must be understood in the context of the other constitutional amendments the Mexican congress will be considering in the upcoming months, including greater autonomy for indigenous and afro-Mexican peoples; greater wage, housing, and pension protections; and a ban on fracking, open-pit mining, and GMO corn for human consumption. No wonder the multinational business community and their spokespeople in the embassies are worried, not only due to the limits the reforms will place on their ability to act with judicial-backed impunity but also for the fear that such a precedent could spread to places like the United States, which is just beginning to undertake its own, far more modest attempt to reform an unchecked and overweening Supreme Court. “The fear of a good example,” as journalist and activist Eugene Puryear puts it, indeed.

#Mexique #USA #justice #corruption #népotisme

#Chronovélo #cours_Berriat : de la #contrainte naîtront les nouveaux #usages

Depuis plusieurs mois, trois unions de quartier font part dans la presse locale (▻https://www.placegrenet.fr/2023/10/20/chronovelo-grenoble-fontaine-trois-unions-de-quartier-refusent-le-futur-sens-unique-cours-berriat-sans-faire-lunanimite/616121) de leur désaccord concernant le tracé de la piste cyclable Chronovélo n°1 sur la portion du cours Berriat entre J. Jaurès et l’Estacade (▻https://www.ledauphine.com/transport/2023/11/22/isere-grenoble-mise-en-sens-unique-du-cours-berriat-les-unions-de-quarti). Afin de maintenir un double-sens automobile, leurs membres souhaitent que la Chronovélo soit réduite en largeur, alors que l’aménagement prévu est déjà en-deçà des recommandations du CEREMA (►https://www.cerema.fr/fr/actualites/rendre-sa-voirie-cyclable-cles-reussite-guide-pratique-du).

Parlons-Y Vélo vous explique pourquoi il s’agit d’une (très) mauvaise idée.
Le transit, un faux débat

Ces unions de quartier expriment des craintes quant à l’augmentation du trafic dû au report de circulation sur la rue Nicolas Chorier. Cependant, nous refusons de nous appuyer sur des craintes non étayées pour justifier une dégradation de l’aménagement cyclable prévu. Focaliser le débat sur le trafic de transit n’est qu’une expression de la peur du changement.

Comme les unions de quartiers, nous constatons, que l’automobile dans les espaces urbains est source de bruits, de pollutions, de dangers en particulier pour les plus vulnérables. Il convient de rappeler que 99,8 % des piétons tués en France l’ont été par un conducteur de véhicule motorisé (Libération, 2023).

Le trafic de transit, par définition, ne s’arrête pas dans le quartier, il le pollue uniquement. Nous proposons donc de revoir totalement le plan de circulation du quartier afin qu’il n’accueille plus de trafic de transit sur aucune de ses rues traversantes. Il s’agit du principe de « #plan_en_marguerite ». Ce type de plan de #circulation existe dans d’autres villes européennes dont personne ne viendrait questionner l’attractivité ou la vitalité commerciale : Gand en Belgique, Barcelone en Espagne, par exemple.

https://parlons-y-velo.fr/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/image.png

Ce type de #plan_de_circulation est un des leviers pour imposer une contrainte sur le #trafic_automobile, sans empêcher l’utilisation de la #voiture pour les besoins des résident-e-s. Cependant, celle-ci perd en #attractivité par rapport aux autres modes de transport. Le quartier Chorier-Berriat est longé par deux lignes de tramway, dispose de nombreux arrêts de bus métropolitains, et jouxte la gare de Grenoble et ses nombreuses destinations routières et ferroviaires. En 2020, les données INSEE montrent que voiture, marche et vélo sont déjà proches en part d’utilisation pour les trajets domicile-travail, il ne suffit que d’un coup de pouce pour renverser la balance.

La contrainte sur le trafic, un levier majeur pour son évaporation

Il est aujourd’hui inutile de rappeler les bienfaits des modes actifs sur la santé, et le besoin de décarboner les transports de courte ou longue distance. un espace public libéré des voitures permet d’autres usages : végétalisation, jeux d’enfants, extension commerçante , bancs, etc. Contraindre les #accès_automobiles amène un effet qui ne revient presque jamais dans le débat public : il s’agit de l’#évaporation_du_trafic, qui a été récemment confirmée par une thèse (►https://transitec.net/fr/actualites/item/11224-levaporation-du-trafic-un-concept-confirme-par-une-these.html). Il est donc faux de considérer le trafic automobile comme une donnée constante : celui-ci évolue selon les choix qui sont faits sur l’espace public.

Le projet Cœur de Ville – Cœur de Métropole de Grenoble, qui a consisté entre autres à la suppression du transit sur l’axe Rey-Sembat-Lyautey en hyper-centre, a été un très bel exemple d’évaporation du trafic. après 1 an de mise en place, 4% du trafic en entrée du centre-ville avait disparu (▻https://www.eco-compteur.com/ressources/grenoble-alpes-metropole-france). La #fréquentation_piétonne, elle, a bondi.

Mais pour le #secteur_Berriat, malgré de nombreux compteurs de trafic automobile présents sur les routes de la Métropole, il est impossible de pouvoir juger de l’évolution… faute de la diffusion des données. À l’instar des unions de quartier, nous attendons avec impatience la publication de chiffres à ce sujet. Le silence actuel profite aux marchands de peur, et contribue à des débats passionnés, sans étaiement objectif possible. Nous le regrettons.

La qualité de ville, la vraie question

Si la #part_modale du vélo à Grenoble a fortement augmenté depuis 2015 (▻https://www.ledauphine.com/transport/2023/11/27/isere-velo-grenoble-fait-la-course-en-tete), c’est grâce à l’arrivée d’un nouveau public sur les bicyclettes, qui n’osait pas utiliser ce transport jusqu’alors : femmes, enfants, personnes âgées, etc. ainsi que le développement de nouvelles pratiques : vélos adaptés aux PMR, vélos couchés, cyclologistique. Rappelons qu’un enfant doit rouler hors du trottoir dès ses 8 ans, ce qui implique qu’il puisse le faire sur la chaussée. Ces nouvelles utilisations du vélo sont permises par la largeur importante du réseau Chronovélo. En effet, une piste cyclable large ne permet pas seulement d’absorber un trafic plus important ; elle offre un cadre sécurisé et agréable aux personnes plus lentes ou disposant de vélos-cargos ou tricycles, sans être gênées par les cyclistes plus aguerris ou plus rapides. Ainsi, une largeur de 4 mètres est indispensable pour garantir une pratique du vélo accessible à toutes et à tous.

https://parlons-y-velo.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/berriat.png

Dans ce contexte, quel intérêt de questionner la population sur 250 mètres de voirie qui passeraient à sens unique, sur un cours qui mérite aujourd’hui une rénovation totale de ses espaces et de ses usages ? Pourquoi s’attarder sur ce qui est finalement un petit sujet, au regard de la question existentielle qui s’est toujours posée aux urbanistes : quelle ville voulons-nous ? Souhaitons-nous des rues où la voiture n’a pas ou peu de contraintes, au détriment d’alignements d’arbres (même à l’ombre en été), de terrasses (qui seront à l’ombre en été, ce qui n’est pas si mal, non ?) et de pavés perméables pour laisser entrer l’eau de pluie dans le sol ? Bref, nous sommes déçus de voir que le débat ne s’intéresse qu’à la circulation de quelques voitures, et qu’il est amené toujours de la même façon : des oppositions de principe au moindre changement d’habitude.
Avec le temps, les avis changent

En 2016, les unions de quartier Centre-Ville et Championnet rejoignaient Grenoble à Cœur , pour s’opposer à CVCM Grenoble et de facto au passage de la Chronovélo sur Rey-Sembat-Lyautey. En 2018, une partie des membres des unions de quartier Berriat, Centre-Ville et Championnet s’opposaient au passage de la Chronovélo sur l’axe Lafontaine-Berriat (▻https://www.placegrenet.fr/2018/12/10/plan-chronovelo-le-velo-qui-marche/530046). Puis, ces mêmes membres se sont opposées à la bordure (▻https://www.placegrenet.fr/2019/04/07/chronovelo-bordure-le-velo-qui-marche/530545) de séparation entre la Chronovélo et la voie routière . Aujourd’hui, peu ou prou les mêmes personnes se déclarent « favorables » à la Chronovélo. Il y a donc bon espoir de les voir défendre des Chronovélo suffisament larges dans les années qui viennent, sur les futurs projets… peut-être les quais rive gauche ?

https://parlons-y-velo.fr/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/2022_1-768x1024.jpg

▻https://parlons-y-velo.fr/chronovelo-cours-berriat-de-la-contrainte-naitront-les-nouveaux-usage
#vélo #aménagement_du_territoire #urbanisme #Grenoble

Today’s Imperialist Clashes Are Driven by Economic Rivalry
▻https://jacobin.com/2024/09/imperialism-economic-policy-hegemony-rivalry

https://images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/05090057/GettyImages-463652382.jpg

A propos des mécanismes et forces qui amplifient les contradictions sur le terrain au point de provoquer des conflits allant de luttes de gangs pour leur zones en passant par des guerre civiles jusqu’aux guerres dans le sens propre du mot.

9.5.2024 by Costas Lapavitsas - The rising bloc conflict shows the fallacy of the idea that there is a single “world” capitalist class. Not every flare up is driven by crude economic calculation — but the rivalry between states has deep material roots.

Global geopolitics is currently marked by extraordinary tensions and armed conflicts raising the threat of world war — above all, in Ukraine, the Middle East, and Taiwan. Since the early 2010s, the disposition of leading state powers has become steadily more reminiscent of the years prior to the great imperialist conflagration of 1914. Such a turn of events would have been very hard to imagine in the 1990s, when the ideology of neoliberal globalization held sway and the United States reigned as the sole superpower.

The United States doubtless remains the main — and most aggressive — player in the international arena, as is evidenced by its stance toward China. Crucially, none of its potential challengers come from the “old” imperialist powers but all have sprung from what used to be considered the Second or Third World — with China as the chief economic and Russia as the chief military contender. This reflects the profound transformation of the world economy in the last several decades.

The ratcheting of tensions is, moreover, taking place at a time of historic underperformance of the core of the world economy, most notably since the Great Crisis of 2007–9. Economic activity in the core areas is remarkably weak in terms of growth, investment, productivity, and so on, and there are no obvious signs of a fresh path forward. The period since the Great Crisis of 2007–9 is a historical interregnum in the classic sense of Antonio Gramsci, that is, of the old dying but the new not being born, except that in this context it signals the inability of core capitalist accumulation to forge a new path for itself both domestically and internationally.

The dramatic reappearance of imperialist and hegemonic contests, and the need for political conclusions, are matters of the first importance for the socialist left, as argued in a recent contribution to Jacobin. In this article, I aim to contribute some key points to the debate by drawing primarily on the recently published collective work The State of Capitalism: Economy, Society, and Hegemony.
The Classical Marxist Political Economy of Imperialism

Marxist theory has consistently sought to link imperialism to the political economy of capitalism. This is most apparent in Vladimir Lenin’s canonical analysis, built on the bedrock of Rudolf Hilferding’s Finance Capital. The current reappearance of imperialist and hegemonic contests is best analyzed along the path opened by these authors.

Approaches that rely on noneconomic explanations, or even seek to detach imperialism from capitalism, such as Joseph Schumpeter’s, have limited explanatory power. Nonetheless, Hilferding’s and Lenin’s theory must be treated with great caution. The current geopolitical outlook of the world might be reminiscent of that prior to 1914 — but appearances can be deceptive.

For both these authors, the key driver of imperialism was the transformation of the fundamental units of capital in the core areas of the world economy, leading to the emergence of finance capital. Summarily put, monopolistic industrial and banking capital amalgamated into finance capital, which sought expansion abroad in two ways: first, through the sale of commodities and, second, through the export of loanable money capital.

In short, classical imperialism was driven by the accelerated internationalization of commodity and money capital under the auspices of amalgamating industrial and financial monopoly capitals.

Naturally, the finance capitals of different countries competed against each other in the world market, for which purpose they sought the support — typically but not exclusively — of their own states. What followed was the creation of colonial empires to secure territorial exclusivity for the export of commodity capital and to create favorable conditions for the export of loanable capital.

The countries that were colonized were typically at a lower stage of capitalist development or were not even capitalistic at all. Such colonial expansion would have been impossible without militarism, and hence the push toward armed confrontation among the competitors.

In sum, the drive to create colonies sprung ultimately from the aggressive operations of finance capitals seeking to secure profits for themselves. To this end, they coopted the services of the state and this created a drive toward war. States are not capitalist enterprises, and their relations are not determined by a gross calculation of profit and loss. They act based on power, history, ideology, and a host of other noneconomic factors. The ultimate arbiter among them is military power.

Imperialist expansion was thus driven fundamentally by private capital but inevitably entailed national oppression, exploitation, and conflict. The flows of value to the metropolis could result from enterprise profits, but might also derive from exploitative taxation, as in India. They were counterbalanced by the substantial expenses of acquiring and maintaining colonies.

In this light, it is misleading to seek to prove the existence of imperialism through an economic model that shows net monetary surpluses created and appropriated by the metropolis. Imperialism is a geopolitical practice as well as an economic reality. It is rooted in the conduct and profits of globally active capitalist enterprises but gives rise to state policies that have complex and contradictory results. In a profound sense, imperialism is a historic outcome of mature capitalist accumulation.
Contemporary Imperialism

In contrast to the time of Hilferding and Lenin, the first and decisive feature of contemporary imperialism is the internationalization of productive capital, rather than merely of commodities and loanable money capital.

Great volumes of capitalist production occur across borders in chains typically led by multinationals, which exercise control either directly through property rights over subsidiaries or indirectly through contracts with local capitalists. The quantitative leap in the volume of international trade in recent decades is an outcome of trading within such chains.

Producing abroad has far more stringent requirements than mere commodity trading or money lending. The international capitalist must have broad knowledge of local economic conditions in recipient countries, reliable rights to local resources, and, above all, access to capable labor-power. All these make it necessary to have direct or indirect relations with the state of both the country of origin and the recipient country.

The second, and equally decisive, point of difference is the characteristic form taken by financial capital in recent decades, which has been a decisive factor in the financialization of capitalism both domestically and internationally.

The export of loanable capital has grown enormously but the bulk of the flows has been, and remains, primarily from core to core, rather than from core to periphery. The proportion has been in the region of ten to one in favor of the former. Moreover, characteristic of the interregnum is the substantial growth of flows from China to the periphery as well as other periphery to periphery flows.

Furthermore, until the Great Crisis of 2007–9, both domestic and international financialization were led primarily by commercial banks. During the interregnum the center of gravity shifted toward the various components of “shadow banking,” that is, non-bank financial institutions, such as investment trusts, that draw profits out of securities trading and holding. Three of these funds — BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street — currently hold in their portfolios an enormous proportion of the entire equity capital of the United States.

Contemporary imperialism is, in short, marked by the internationalization of productive as well as commodity and money capital, once again under the auspices of monopolizing industrial and financial capitals. However, again contrary to the time of Hilferding and Lenin, there is no amalgamation of industrial with financial capital, and certainly none in which the latter dominates the former.

Domination is not, after all, an outcome of the essential motion of capital but derives from the concrete realities of capitalist operations in specific historical contexts. In the early twentieth century, banks could dominate industrial capitals because the latter relied heavily on bank loans to finance long-term fixed investment. Such loans allowed and encouraged banks to get actively involved in the management of big business.

Today, industrial enterprises in core countries are marked by low investment, while simultaneously holding huge volumes of money capital in reserve. Both are characteristic features of the financialization of industrial enterprises as well as of the underperformance of core economies during the interregnum. They also imply that the great international corporations are far less dependent on financial capital than in the days of classical imperialism.

The vast equity holdings of “shadow banks” are certainly important insofar as voting power within large corporations is concerned, and they thus play a role in the decision-making of nonfinancial corporations. It is, however, a wild overstretch to claim that the Big Three dictate terms to corporate USA. They are holders of equity that belongs to others — often other “shadow banks” — and seek profits by managing their securities portfolios. Their position is reminiscent of a rentier but one who strives for a balance of coexistence with the industrialist through the securities markets.

The driving force of contemporary imperialism springs from this pairing of internationalized industrial with internationalized financial capital. Neither dominates the other and there is no fundamental clash between them. Jointly they comprise the most aggressive form of capital known to history.
Economic Requirements of Contemporary Imperialism

The pairing of capitals that drives contemporary imperialism does not need territorial exclusivity and nor does it seek to form colonial empires. On the contrary, it thrives on unfettered access to global natural resources, cheap labor power, low taxation, loose environmental standards, and markets for its industrial, commercial, and financial components.

One point to stress in this connection is that there is no “world” capitalist class. This is an illusion from the days of the ideological triumph of globalization and sole US hegemony. There is certainly a similarity of outlook among internationally active capitalists, ultimately reflecting the hegemonic power of the United States. But the enormous escalation of tensions in recent years shows that capitalists are, and will remain, divided into potentially hostile groups internationally.

Incidentally, there is also no “labor aristocracy” in core countries, contrary to what Lenin claimed. The vast pressure on workers in core countries during the last four decades has disproven that notion.

Internationally active industrial and financial capitals have two fundamental requirements. First, there must be clear and enforceable rules for the flows of productive investment, commodities, and loanable money capital. This is not simply a matter of agreement by treaty among states but something that must be ensured by appropriately structured institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the Bank for International Settlements, and so on. Second, there must be a reliable form of world money to act as a unit of account, means of payment, and reserve of value.

Both requirements — especially the latter — reflect the peculiar character of the world economy, which, unlike the domestic, inherently lacks the coordinating and organizing presence of one national state. Nonetheless, industrial and financial capitals still need the support of national states as they navigate the straits of the world market.

Inevitably, the system of national states — as distinct from the system of internationally competing capitals — enters the picture and brings its own noneconomic considerations to bear.
The Role of Hegemony

The characteristic feature of the system of national states is hegemony, and there are few guides better than Gramsci to approaching this issue, as Robert Cox suggested a long time ago. Gramsci’s focus was on the domestic balance of classes and the resultant political outcomes, rather than international state relations. The point that matters for our purposes, however, is that, for Gramsci, hegemony involves coercion as well as consent. Both are crucial to how contemporary imperialism operates.

The United States was the sole hegemon for nearly three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its power deriving from economic predominance reflected in the size of its GDP and its attendant markets, the volume of its international trade, and the magnitude of inward and outward capital flows. Above all, its hegemonic position derived from the unique ability to entrench its own domestic currency as world money.

US coercive power is partly economic as is evidenced by the enormous range of sanctions that it regularly imposes on others. Primarily, however, it is military, drawing on enormous expenditures that currently exceed $1 trillion annually. This is greater than that of the “old” imperialist powers by at least one order of magnitude and finances a vast network of military bases across the globe. Unlike the classical period, militarization and a huge military-industrial complex are permanent and integral features of the US economy.

The US power of consent is based on its dominant role across the range of international institutions that regulate international economic activity. This form of power draws on universities and think tanks that produce the prevalent ideology in international institutions. It has proven instrumental to generating a common outlook among internationally active capitalists across the world for several decades.

As sole hegemon, the United States has consistently furthered the interests of its globally active capitals. In doing so, it has created conditions that also allow the capitals of other “old” imperialist countries to operate profitably, not least by ensuring controlled access to dollars at critical moments, as in 2008 but also in 2020. In this regard, too, contemporary imperialism is dramatically different from the classical version.

The hegemonic problem for the United States arose out of the contradictory nature of these tendencies.

On the one hand, favoring the interests of internationally active capitals had substantial costs for sections of the US domestic economy. Manufacturing migrated, leaving behind persistent unemployment, enterprises registered in tax havens to avoid taxes, technical capacity was lost, and so on.

On the other, the relocation of productive capacity helped the emergence of independent centers of capitalist accumulation in what were previously considered the Second and the Third Worlds. The main role was played by national states that navigated the shoals of globalized production, trade, and finance. But relocation of production was also a crucial factor.

The prime example is obviously China, which has emerged as the largest manufacturing and trading country in the world. To be sure, giant Chinese industrial and financial enterprises have distinctive features and relations compared to their US equivalents, not least since several of them are state owned. But the finance capitals of classical imperialism also differed substantially among themselves as, for instance, Kozo Uno pointed out.

For our purposes, enormous Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, Korean, Russian, and other industrial and financial enterprises increasingly operate on a global scale and seek state support to influence the rules of the game as well as to determine world money. That means primarily their own state, though they also cultivate relations with other states.
The Drive to War

The roots of the steadily aggravating imperialist contests are to be found in this configuration of global capitalism. The United States will obviously not submit to the challenge and draws on its vast military, political, and monetary power to protect its hegemony. That makes it the main threat to world peace.

The current contests are, in other words, reminiscent of the pre-1914 era, in the fundamental sense of being driven by underlying economic motives. This does not mean that crude economic calculation is behind every flare up, but it does mean that the contests have deep material roots. They are, thus, extraordinarily dangerous and difficult to deal with.

Moreover, the contests are qualitatively different to the opposition between the United States and the Soviet Union, which was primarily political and ideological. During the interregnum, the United States has relied on the support of the “old” imperialist powers, primarily by drawing on its power of consent, rooted in anti-Soviet times. Nothing guarantees that it will be able to do so forever.

The Left is thus faced with a difficult but at the same time clear choice. The gradual emergence of “multipolarity” as other powerful states challenge US hegemony has created some space for smaller countries to defend their own interests. But there is nothing meritorious or progressive about Chinese, Indian, Russian, or any other capitalism. Furthermore, it is vital to remember that the world was multipolar in 1914, and the result was catastrophe.

The answer can still be found in Lenin’s writings, even if the world has changed greatly. The socialist left must oppose imperialism, while recognizing that the United States is the main aggressor. But that ought to be done from an independent position that is openly anti-capitalist and has no illusions about China, India, Russia, and other contenders, much less the “old” imperialists.

The path must be that of domestic anti-capitalist transformation based on popular sovereignty and coupled with national sovereignty that seeks international equality. Such would be a true internationalism, resting on the power of workers and the poor. How it could again become a real political force is the deepest problem of our times.

#impérialisme #banques #fonds_d_investissement #USA #Chine #Russie #concurrence

First We Take Manhattan
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0rZ2CPCYBQ&t=21

Il y a des monuments d’art dont on aimerait oublier la puissance dl’anticipation.

▻https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_We_Take_Manhattan

“First We Take Manhattan” is a song written by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen. It was originally recorded by American singer Jennifer Warnes on her 1986 Cohen tribute album Famous Blue Raincoa
...
The song’s oblique lyrics are suggestive of religious and end time themes, with references to prayer, meaningful birthmarks and signs in the sky. Writing for The Guardian in 2015, Ben Hewitt drew attention to the lyrics’ apocalyptic nature, imagining Cohen “greedily eyeing world domination like a Bond villain”. Rolling Stone magazine’s Mikal Gilmore similarly described the song as a threatening vision of “social collapse and a terrorist’s revenge”. The Daily Telegraph’s Robert Sandall likewise observed the prophetic character of the song, but emphasized the song’s political statement, placing it in the context of the last days of the Soviet Union.

Cohen explained himself in a backstage interview at 1988: “I think it means exactly what it says. It is a terrorist song. I think it’s a response to terrorism. There’s something about terrorism that I’ve always admired. The fact that there are no alibis or no compromises. That position is always very attractive. I don’t like it when it’s manifested on the physical plane – I don’t really enjoy the terrorist activities – but Psychic Terrorism. I remember there was a great poem by Irving Layton that I once read, I’ll give you a paraphrase of it. It was ’well, you guys blow up an occasional airline and kill a few children here and there’, he says. ’But our terrorists, Jesus, Freud, Marx, Einstein. The whole world is still quaking.’”

Paroles de First We Take Manhattan

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For tryin’ to change the system from within
I’m coming now, I’m coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

I’m guided by a signal in the heavens
I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin
I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

I’d really like to live beside you, baby
I love your body and your spirit and your clothes
But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those
Ah you loved me as a loser, but now you’re worried that I just might win
You know the way to stop me, but you don’t have the discipline
How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

I don’t like your fashion business, mister
And I don’t like these drugs that keep you thin
I don’t like what happened to my sister
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

I’d really like to live beside you, baby
I love your body and your spirit and your clothes
But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those

And I thank you for those items that you sent me
The monkey and the plywood violin
I practiced every night, now I’m ready
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

(I am guided)

Ah remember me, I used to live for music (baby)
Remember me, I brought your groceries in (ooh baby yeah)
Well it’s Father’s Day and everybody’s wounded (baby)
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

#musique #poésie #USA #Allemagne #Israel #terrorisme #apocalypse

En 1972 il avait tout compris : Fritz The Cat
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmK3PrGAdxk

Fritz the Cat (film)
▻https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_the_Cat_(film)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/75/Fritz_the_Cat_%28film%29.jpg

Fritz the Cat is a 1972 American adult animated black comedy film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi in his directorial debut. Based on the comic strip of the same name by Robert Crumb, the film focuses on its Skip Hinnant-portrayed titular character, a glib, womanizing and fraudulent cat in an anthropomorphic animal version of New York City during the mid-to-late 1960s. Fritz decides on a whim to drop out of college, interacts with inner city African American crows, unintentionally starts a race riot and becomes a leftist revolutionary. The film is a satire focusing on American college life of the era, race relations, and the free love movement, as well as serving as a criticism of the countercultural political revolution and dishonest political activists.

#USA #Israel #New_York #Los_Angeles #cinéma #animation #bande_dessinée

Eugene Debs : “The Scab Is the Natural Born Foe of Labor”
▻https://jacobin.com/2024/09/eugene-debs-scabs-labor-day

https://images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/01161113/Eugene_V._Debs-e1725221498104.jpg

Une belle tirade contre la vermine de briseurs de grève par le grand syndicaliste et fondateur du syndicat des Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). On aimerait entendre plus souvent ce genre de discours à propos des abjects bellicistes et d’autres ennemis de classe.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Debs_campaign.jpg

2.9.2024 by Eugene Debs - This Labor Day weekend, we share Eugene Debs’s 1888 broadside against that most hateful of characters: the strikebreaker. The scab “sinks to the level of a loathsome reptile,” Debs writes. “He becomes a walking, breathing stench.”

Philosophers, particularly those who have sought to solve the simpler mysteries of creation, have always been greatly perplexed when endeavoring to find any plausible reason for the existence of certain insects and reptiles, which curse the earth, the air, and the water. They have never succeeded. The mystery is unexplained and unexplainable. But, while it is impossible to explain the whys and the wherefores of repulsive, pestiferous, and poisonous creatures, we may study their habits and guard against contact with them.

It becomes our duty at this writing to discuss the “scab.” Generally, people quickly comprehend what is meant when a creature, in the form of a man, is referred to as a “scab.” Shakespeare says, a “scab” is a “low fellow” — how low the great bard does not intimate, but he doubtless believed that a “scab” was the lowest in the list of bipeds. The term “scab” has a significance wholly repulsive. It is suggestive of filth, disease, and corruption. There is nothing in the term “scab” to redeem it from loathing. When a creature in the form of a man rightfully receives the sobriquet of “scab,” he is known to be a mass of moral putrescence. He sinks to the level of a loathsome reptile. Honorable men shun him as they would a pestilence. A scabby sheep, a mangy dog, outrank him. He becomes a walking, breathing stench. He is as destitute of soul as a dungeon toad. He is as heartless as a man-eating tiger. He has no more conscience than a tarantula. To call him a dog would be an insult to the whole canine race.
A poster from the 1888 Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad strike. (Wikimedia Commons)

The average scab is a moral leper — unclean through and through, so vulgar and beastly in his instincts that he is as destitute of all sense of obligation, of what is due to others, as a hungry hog with its snout in a swill tub. The scab is a sneak — analyze him, resolve him to his original elements, and all the subtle arts of the chemist would never discover the millionth part of a milligram of manhood. A scab is as totally deficient of ability to comprehend the right as a piratical wolf. Being depraved by nature and association, he has no more ambition than a buzzard. When he sees a manly endeavor on the part of others to better their condition, the incident simply suggests to his mind that there is a chance for him, and with his hat under his arm and with bowed form he asks, like a menial, to work for wages that an honorable man refuses. The scab always comes to the front when honest workingmen strike against oppression and injustice. On such occasions, employers fish for scabs in the stinking pools of idleness and depravity, and they are ready to do their duty for such considerations as their masters may offer. The scab is a filthy wretch, who though the Mississippi ran bank-full of soap suds, could not wash him clean in a thousand years.

The scab is the natural born foe of labor in its efforts to advance from the condition of servitude to independence, and such he has been found to be in the struggle of the engineers and firemen with the CB&Q [The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, which saw a major strike in 1888], and he is destined to play the same degenerate role in the future. The scab merits universal reprobation, and that will be the verdict of all honorable men.

Eugene V. Debs
▻https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs

Debs’ Speech of Sedition
▻https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Debs%27_Speech_of_Sedition#1

A June 16, 1918, speech denouncing the First World War, and the military draft. Labour leader Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for the crime of sedition after giving this speech, though his sentence was commuted before he completed his third year.

Le discours

Comrades, friends and fellow-workers, for this very cordial greeting, this very hearty reception, I thank you all with the fullest appreciation of your interest in and your devotion to the cause for which I am to speak to you this afternoon.

To speak for labor; to plead the cause of the men and women and children who toil; to serve the working class, has always been to me a high privilege; a duty of love.

I have just returned from a visit over yonder, where three of our most loyal comrades are paying the penalty for their devotion to the cause of the working class. They have come to realize, as many of us have, that it is extremely dangerous to exercise the constitutional right of free speech in a country fighting to make democracy safe in the world.

I realize that, in speaking to you this afternoon, there are certain limitations placed upon the right of free speech. I must be exceedingly careful, prudent, as to what I say, and even more careful and prudent as to how I say it. I may not be able to say all I think; but I am not going to say anything that I do not think. I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets. They may put those boys in jail—and some of the rest of us in jail—but they cannot put the Socialist movement in jail. Those prison bars separate their bodies from ours, but their souls are here this afternoon. They are simply paying the penalty that all men have paid in all the ages of history for standing erect, and for seeking to pave the way to better conditions for mankind.

If it had not been for the men and women who, in the past, have had the moral courage to go to jail, we would still be in the jungles.

This assemblage is exceedingly good to look upon. I wish it were possible for me to give you what you are giving me this afternoon. What I say here amounts to but little; what I see here is exceedingly important. You workers in Ohio, enlisted in the greatest cause ever organized in the interest of your class, are making history today in the face of threatening opposition of all kinds—history that is going to be read with profound interest by coming generations.

There is but one thing you have to be concerned about, and that is that you keep foursquare with the principles of the international Socialist movement. It is only when you begin to compromise that trouble begins. So far as I am concerned, it does not matter what others may say, or think, or do, as long as I am sure that I am right with myself and the cause. There are so many who seek refuge in the popular side of a great question. As a Socialist, I have long since learned how to stand alone. For the last month I have been traveling over the Hoosier State; and, let me say to you, that, in all my connection with the Socialist movement, I have never seen such meetings, such enthusiasm, such unity of purpose; never have I seen such a promising outlook as there is today, notwithstanding the statement published repeatedly that our leaders have deserted us. Well, for myself, I never had much faith in leaders. I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week. If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and misrepresentatives of the masses—you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.

When I came away from Indiana, the comrades said: “When you cross the line and get over into the Buckeye State, tell the comrades there that we are on duty and doing duty. Give them for us, a hearty greeting, and tell them that we are going to make a record this fall that will be read around the world.”

The Socialists of Ohio, it appears, are very much alive this year. The party has been killed recently, which, no doubt, accounts for its extraordinary activity. There is nothing that helps the Socialist Party so much as receiving an occasional deathblow. The oftener it is killed the more active, the more energetic, the more powerful it becomes.

They who have been reading the capitalist newspapers realize what a capacity they have for lying. We have been reading them lately. They know all about the Socialist Party—the Socialist movement, except what is true. Only the other day they took an article that I had written—and most of you have read it—most of you members of the party, at least—and they made it appear that I had undergone a marvelous transformation. I had suddenly become changed—had in fact come to my senses; I had ceased to be a wicked Socialist, and had become a respectable Socialist, a patriotic Socialist—as if I had ever been anything else.

What was the purpose of this deliberate misrepresentation? It is so self-evident that it suggests itself. The purpose was to sow the seeds of dissension in our ranks; to have it appear that we were divided among ourselves; that we were pitted against each other, to our mutual undoing. But Socialists were not born yesterday. They know how to read capitalist newspapers; and to believe exactly the opposite of what they read.

Why should a Socialist be discouraged on the eve of the greatest triumph in all the history of the Socialist movement? It is true that these are anxious, trying days for us all—testing days for the women and men who are upholding the banner of labor in the struggle of the working class of all the world against the exploiters of all the world; a time in which the weak and cowardly will falter and fail and desert. They lack the fiber to endure the revolutionary test; they fall away; they disappear as if they had never been. On the other hand, they who are animated by the unconquerable spirit of the social revolution; they who have the moral courage to stand erect and assert their convictions; stand by them; fight for them; go to jail or to hell for them, if need be—they are writing their names, in this crucial hour—they are writing their names in faceless letters in the history of mankind.

Those boys over yonder—those comrades of ours—and how I love them! Aye, they are my younger brothers; their very names throb in my heart, thrill in my veins, and surge in my soul. I am proud of them; they are there for us; and we are here for them. Their lips, though temporarily mute, are more eloquent than ever before; and their voice, though silent, is heard around the world.

Are we opposed to Prussian militarism? Why, we have been fighting it since the day the Socialist movement was born; and we are going to continue to fight it, day and night, until it is wiped from the face of the earth. Between us there is no truce—no compromise.

But, before I proceed along this line, let me recall a little history, in which I think we are all interested.

In 1869 that grand old warrior of the social revolution, the elder Liebknecht, was arrested and sentenced to prison for three months, because of his war, as a Socialist, on the Kaiser and on the Junkers that rule Germany. In the meantime the Franco-Prussian war broke out. Liebknecht and Bebel were the Socialist members in the Reichstag. They were the only two who had the courage to protest against taking Alsace-Lorraine from France and annexing it to Germany. And for this they were sentenced two years to a prison fortress charged with high treason; because, even in that early day, almost fifty years ago, these leaders, these forerunners of the international Socialist movement were fighting the Kaiser and fighting the Junkers of Germany. They have continued to fight them from that day to this. Multiplied thousands of Socialists have languished in the jails of Germany because of their heroic warfare upon the despotic ruling class of that country.

Let us come down the line a little farther. You remember that, at the close of Theodore Roosevelt’s second term as President, he went over to Africa to make war on some of his ancestors. You remember that, at the close of his expedition, he visited the capitals of Europe; and that he was wined and dined, dignified and glorified by all the Kaisers and Czars and Emperors of the Old World. He visited Potsdam while the Kaiser was there; and, according to the accounts published in the American newspapers, he and the Kaiser were soon on the most familiar terms. They were hilariously intimate with each other, and slapped each other on the back. After Roosevelt had reviewed the Kaiser’s troops, according to the same accounts, he became enthusiastic over the Kaiser’s legions and said: “If I had that kind of an army, I could conquer the world.” He knew the Kaiser then just as well as he knows him now. He knew that he was the Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin. And yet, he permitted himself to be entertained by that Beast of Berlin; had his feet under the mahogany of the Beast of Berlin; was cheek by jowl with the Beast of Berlin. And, while Roosevelt was being entertained royally by the German Kaiser, that same Kaiser was putting the leaders of the Socialist Party in jail for fighting the Kaiser and the Junkers of Germany. Roosevelt was the guest of honor in the white house of the Kaiser, while the Socialists were in the jails of the Kaiser for fighting the Kaiser. Who then was fighting for democracy? Roosevelt? Roosevelt, who was honored by the Kaiser, or the Socialists who were in jail by order of the Kaiser?
Birds of a feather flock together

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When the newspapers reported that Kaiser Wilhelm and ex-President Theodore recognized each other at sight, were perfectly intimate with each other at the first touch, they made the admission that is fatal to the claim of Theodore Roosevelt, that he is the friend of the common people and the champion of democracy; they admitted that they were kith and kin; that they were very much alike; that their ideas and ideals were about the same. If Theodore Roosevelt is the great champion of democracy—the arch-foe of autocracy, what business had he as the guest of honor of the Prussian Kaiser? And when he met the Kaiser, and did honor to the Kaiser, under the terms imputed to him, wasn’t it pretty strong proof that he himself was a Kaiser at heart? Now, after being the guest of Emperor Wilhelm, the Beast of Berlin, he comes back to this country, and wants you to send ten million men over there to kill the Kaiser; to murder his former friend and pal. Rather queer, isn’t it? And yet, he is the patriot, and we are the traitors. I challenge you to find a Socialist anywhere on the face of the earth who was ever the guest of the Beast of Berlin, except as an inmate of his prison—the elder Liebknecht and the younger Liebknecht, the heroic son of his immortal sire.

A little more history along the same line. In 1902 Prince Henry paid a visit to this country. Do you remember him? I do, exceedingly well. Prince Henry is the brother of Emperor Wilhelm. Prince Henry is another Beast of Berlin, an autocrat, an aristocrat, a Junker of Junkers—very much despised by our American patriots. He came over here in 1902 as the representative of Kaiser Wilhelm; he was received by Congress and by several state legislatures—among others, by the state legislature of Massachusetts, then in session. He was invited there by the capitalist captains of that so-called commonwealth. And when Prince Henry arrived, there was one member of that body who kept his self-respect, put on his hat, and as Henry, the Prince, walked in, that member of the body walked out. And that was James F. Carey, the Socialist member of that body. All the rest—all the rest of the representatives in the Massachusetts legislature—all, all of them—joined in doing honor, in the most servile spirit, to the high representative of the autocracy of Europe. And the only man who left that body, was a Socialist. And yet , and yet they have the hardihood to claim that they are fighting autocracy and that we are in the service of the German government.

A little more history along the same line. I have a distinct recollection of it. It occurred fifteen years ago when Prince Henry came here. All of our plutocracy, all of the wealthy representatives living along Fifth Avenue—all, all of them—threw their palace doors wide open and received Prince Henry with open arms. But they were not satisfied with this; they got down and grovelled in the dust at his feet. Our plutocracy—women and men alike—vied with each other to lick the boots of Prince Henry, the brother and representative of the “Beast of Berlin.” And still our plutocracy, our Junkers, would have us believe that all the Junkers are confined to Germany. It is precisely because we refuse to believe this that they brand us as disloyalists. They want our eyes focused on the Junkers in Berlin so that we will not see those within our own borders.

I hate, I loathe, I despise Junkers and junkerdom. I have no earthly use for the Junkers of Germany, and not one particle more use for the Junkers in the United States.

They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. This is too much, even for a joke. But it is not a subject for levity; it is an exceedingly serious matter.

To whom do the Wall Street Junkers in our country marry their daughters? After they have wrung their countless millions from your sweat, your agony and your life’s blood, in a time of war as in a time of peace, they invest these untold millions in the purchase of titles of broken-down aristocrats, such as princes, dukes, counts and other parasites and no-accounts. Would they be satisfied to wed their daughters to honest workingmen? To real democrats? Oh, no! They scour the markets of Europe for vampires who are titled and nothing else. And they swap their millions for the titles, so that matrimony with them becomes literally a matter of money.

These are the gentry who are today wrapped up in the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the country for evidence of disloyalty, eager to apply the brand of treason to the men who dare to even whisper their opposition to Junker rule in the United States. No wonder Sam Johnson declared that “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people.

They would have you believe that the Socialist Party consists in the main of disloyalists and traitors. It is true in a sense not at all to their discredit. We frankly admit that we are disloyalists and traitors to the real traitors of this nation; to the gang that on the Pacific coast are trying to hang Tom Mooney and Warren Billings in spite of their well-known innocence and the protest of practically the whole civilized world.

I know Tom Mooney intimately—as if he were my own brother. He is an absolutely honest man. He had no more to do with the crime with which he was charged and for which he was convicted than I had. And if he ought to go to the gallows, so ought I. If he is guilty every man who belongs to a labor organization or to the Socialist Party is likewise guilty.

What is Tom Mooney guilty of? I will tell you. I am familiar with his record. For years he has been fighting bravely and without compromise the battles of the working class out on the Pacific coast. He refused to be bribed and he could not be browbeaten. In spite of all attempts to intimidate him he continued loyally in the service of the organized workers, and for this he became a marked man. The henchmen of the powerful and corrupt corporations, concluding finally that he could not be bought or bribed or bullied, decided he must therefore be murdered. That is why Tom Mooney is today a life prisoner, and why he would have been hanged as a felon long ago but for the world-wide protest of the working class.

Let us review another bit of history. You remember Francis J. Heney, special investigator of the state of California, who was shot down in cold blood in the courtroom in San Francisco. You remember that dastardly crime, do you not? The United Railways, consisting of a lot of plutocrats and highbinders represented by the Chamber of Commerce, absolutely control the city of San Francisco. The city was and is their private reservation. Their will is the supreme law. Take your stand against them and question their authority, and you are doomed. They do not hesitate a moment to plot murder or any other crime to perpetuate their corrupt and enslaving regime. Tom Mooney was the chief representative of the working class they could not control. They own the railways; they control the great industries; they are the industrial masters and the political rulers of the people. From their decision there is no appeal. They are the autocrats of the Pacific coast—as cruel and infamous as any that ever ruled in Germany or any other country in the old world. When their rule became so corrupt that at last a grand jury indicted them and they were placed on trial, and Francis J. Heney was selected to assist in their prosecution, this gang, represented by the Chamber of Commerce; this gang of plutocrats, autocrats and highbinders, hired an assassin to shoot Heney down in the courtroom. Heney, however, happened to live through it. But that was not their fault. The same identical gang that hired the murderer to kill Heney also hired false witnesses to swear away the life of Tom Mooney and, foiled in that, they have kept him in a foul prisonhole ever since.

Every solitary one of these aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot; every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense! These autocrats, these tyrants, these red-handed robbers and murderers, the “patriots,” while the men who have the courage to stand face to face with them, speak the truth, and fight for their exploited victims—they are the disloyalists and traitors. If this be true, I want to take my place side by side with the traitors in this fight.

The other day they sentenced Kate Richards O’Hare to the penitentiary for five years. Think of sentencing a woman to the penitentiary simply for talking. The United States, under plutocratic rule, is the only country that would send a woman to prison for five years for exercising the right of free speech. If this be treason, let them make the most of it.

Let me review a bit of history in connection with this case. I have known Kate Richards O’Hare intimately for twenty years. I am familiar with her public record. Personally I know her as if she were my own sister. All who know Mrs. O’Hare know her to be a woman of unquestioned integrity.’ And they also know that she is a woman of unimpeachable loyalty to the Socialist movement. When she went out into North Dakota to make her speech, followed by plain-clothes men in the service of the government intent upon effecting her arrest and securing her prosecution and conviction—when she went out there, it was with the full knowledge on her part that sooner or later these detectives would accomplish their purpose. She made her speech, and that speech was deliberately misrepresented for the purpose of securing her conviction. The only testimony against her was that of a hired witness. And when the farmers, the men and women who were in the audience she addressed—when they went to Bismarck where the trial was held to testify in her favor, to swear that she had not used the language she was charged with having used, the judge refused to allow them to go upon the stand. This would seem incredible to me if I had not had some experience of my own with federal courts.

Who appoints our federal judges? The people? In all the history of the country, the working class have never named a federal judge. There are 121 of these judges and every solitary one holds his position, his tenure, through the influence and power of corporate capital. The corporations and trusts dictate their appointment. And when they go to the bench, they go not to serve the people, but to serve the interests that place them and keep them where they are.

Why, the other day, by a vote of five to four—a kind of craps game—come seven, come ‘leven—they declared the child labor law unconstitutional—a law secured after twenty years of education and agitation on the part of all kinds of people. And yet, by a majority of one, the Supreme Court a body of corporation lawyers, with just one exception, wiped that law from the statute books, and this in our so-called democracy, so that we may continue to grind the flesh and blood and bones of puny little children into profits for the Junkers of Wall Street. And this in a country that boasts of fighting to make the world safe for democracy! The history of this country is being written in the blood of the childhood the industrial lords have murdered.

These are not palatable truths to them. They do not like to hear them; and what is more they do not want you to hear them. And that is why they brand us as undesirable citizens , and as disloyalists and traitors. If we were actual traitors—traitors to the people and to their welfare and progress, we would be regarded as eminently respectable citizens of the republic; we would hold high office, have princely incomes, and ride in limousines; and we would be pointed out as the elect who have succeeded in life in honorable pursuit, and worthy of emulation by the youth of the land. It is precisely because we are disloyal to the traitors that we are loyal to the people of this nation.

Scott Nearing! You have heard of Scott Nearing. He is the greatest teacher in the United States. He was in the University of Pennsylvania until the Board of Trustees, consisting of great capitalists, captains of industry, found that he was teaching sound economics to the students in his classes. This sealed his fate in that institution. They sneeringly charged—just as the same usurers, money-changers, pharisees, hypocrites charged the Judean Carpenter some twenty centuries ago—that he was a false teacher and that he was stirring up the people.

The Man of Galilee, the Carpenter, the workingman who became the revolutionary agitator of his day soon found himself to be an undesirable citizen in the eyes of the ruling knaves and they had him crucified. And now their lineal descendants say of Scott Nearing, “He is preaching false economics. We cannot crucify him as we did his elder brother but we can deprive him of employment and so cut off his income and starve him to death or into submission. We will not only discharge him but place his name upon the blacklist and make it impossible for him to earn a living. He is a dangerous man for he is teaching the truth and opening the eyes of the people.” And the truth, oh, the truth has always been unpalatable and intolerable to the class who live out of the sweat and misery of the working class.

Max Eastman has been indicted and his paper suppressed, just as the papers with which I have been connected have all been suppressed. What a wonderful compliment they pay us! They are afraid that we may mislead and contaminate you. You are their wards; they are your guardians and they know what is best for you to read and hear and know. They are bound to see to it that our vicious doctrines do not reach your ears. And so in our great democracy, under our free institutions, they flatter our press by suppression; and they ignorantly imagine that they have silenced revolutionary propaganda in the United States. What an awful mistake they make for our benefit! As a matter of justice to them we should respond with resolutions of thanks and gratitude. Thousands of people who had never before heard of our papers are now inquiring for and insisting upon seeing them. They have succeeded only in arousing curiosity in our literature and propaganda. And woe to him who reads Socialist literature from curiosity! He is surely a goner. I have known of a thousand experiments but never one that failed.

John M. Work! You know John, now on the editorial staff of the Milwaukee Leader! When I first knew him he was a lawyer out in Iowa. The capitalists out there became alarmed because of the rapid growth of the Socialist movement. So they said: “We have to find some able fellow to fight this menace.” They concluded that John Work was the man for the job and they said to him: “John, you are a bright young lawyer; you have a brilliant future before you. We want to engage you to find out all you can about socialism and then proceed to counteract its baneful effects and check its further growth.”

John at once provided himself with Socialist literature and began his study of the red menace, with the result that after he had read and digested a few volumes he was a full-fledged Socialist and has been fighting for socialism ever since.

How stupid and shortsighted the ruling class really is! Cupidity is stone blind. It has no vision. The greedy, profit-seeking exploiter cannot see beyond the end of his nose. He can see a chance for an “opening”; he is cunning enough to know what graft is and where it is, and how it can be secured, but vision he has none—not the slightest. He knows nothing of the great throbbing world that spreads out in all directions. He has no capacity for literature; no appreciation of art; no soul for beauty. That is the penalty the parasites pay for the violation of the laws of life. The Rockefellers are blind. Every move they make in their game of greed but hastens their own doom. Every blow they strike at the Socialist movement reacts upon themselves. Every time they strike at us they hit themselves. It never fails. Every time they strangle a Socialist paper they add a thousand voices proclaiming the truth of the principles of socialism and the ideals of the Socialist movement. They help us in spite of themselves.

Socialism is a growing idea; an expanding philosophy. It is spreading over the entire face of the earth: It is as vain to resist it as it would be to arrest the sunrise on the morrow. It is coming, coming, coming all along the line. Can you not see it? If not, I advise you to consult an oculist. There is certainly something the matter with your vision. It is the mightiest movement in the history of mankind. What a privilege to serve it! I have regretted a thousand times that I can do so little for the movement that has done so much for me. The little that I am, the little that I am hoping to be, I owe to the Socialist movement. It has given me my ideas and ideals; my principles and convictions, and I would not exchange one of them for all of Rockefeller’s bloodstained dollars. It has taught me how to serve—a lesson to me of priceless value. It has taught me the ecstasy in the handclasp of a comrade. It has enabled me to hold high communion with you, and made it possible for me to take my place side by side with you in the great struggle for the better day; to multiply myself over and over again, to thrill with a fresh-born manhood; to feel life truly worthwhile; to open new avenues of vision; to spread out glorious vistas; to know that I am kin to all that throbs; to be class-conscious, and to realize that, regardless of nationality, race, creed, color or sex, every man, every woman who toils, who renders useful service, every member of the working class without an exception, is my comrade, my brother and sister—and that to serve them and their cause is the highest duty of my life.

And in their service I can feel myself expand; I can rise to the stature of a man and claim the right to a place on earth—a place where I can stand and strive to speed the day of industrial freedom and social justice.

Yes, my comrades, my heart is attuned to yours. Aye, all our hearts now throb as one great heart responsive to the battle cry of the social revolution. Here, in this alert and inspiring assemblage our hearts are with the Bolsheviki of Russia. Those heroic men and women, those unconquerable comrades have by their incomparable valor and sacrifice added fresh luster to the fame of the international movement. Those Russian comrades of ours have made greater sacrifices, have suffered more, and have shed more heroic blood than any like number of men and women anywhere on earth; they have laid the foundation of the first real democracy that ever drew the breath of life in this world. And the very first act of the triumphant Russian revolution was to proclaim a state of peace with all mankind, coupled with a fervent moral appeal, not to kings, not to emperors, rulers or diplomats but to the people of all nations. Here we have the very breath of democracy, the quintessence of the dawning freedom. The Russian revolution proclaimed its glorious triumph in its ringing and inspiring appeal to the peoples of all the earth. In a humane and fraternal spirit new Russia, emancipated at last from the curse of the centuries, called upon all nations engaged in the frightful war, the Central Powers as well as the Allies, to send representatives to a conference to lay down terms of peace that should be just and lasting. Here was the supreme opportunity to strike the blow to make the world safe for democracy. Was there any response to that noble appeal that in some day to come will be written in letters of gold in the history of the world? Was there any response whatever to that appeal for universal peace? No, not the slightest attention was paid to it by the Christian nations engaged in the terrible slaughter.

It has been charged that Lenin and Trotsky and the leaders of the revolution were treacherous, that they made a traitorous peace with Germany. Let us consider that proposition briefly. At the time of the revolution Russia had been three years in the war. Under the Czar she had lost more than four million of her ill-clad, poorly-equipped, half-starved soldiers, slain outright or disabled on the field of battle. She was absolutely bankrupt. Her soldiers were mainly without arms. This was what was bequeathed to the revolution by the Czar and his regime; and for this condition Lenin and Trotsky were not responsible, nor the Bolsheviki. For this appalling state of affairs the Czar and his rotten bureaucracy were solely responsible. When the Bolsheviki came into power and went through the archives they found and exposed the secret treaties—the treaties that were made between the Czar and the French government, the British government and the Italian government, proposing, after the victory was achieved, to dismember the German Empire and destroy the Central Powers. These treaties have never been denied nor repudiated. Very little has been said about them in the American press. I have a copy of these treaties, showing that the purpose of the Allies is exactly the purpose of the Central Powers, and that is the conquest and spoilation of the weaker nations that has always been the purpose of war.

Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war. The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another’s throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose—especially their lives.

They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.

And here let me emphasize the fact—and it cannot be repeated too often—that the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace.

Yours not to reason why;
Yours but to do and die.

That is their motto and we object on the part of the awakening workers of this nation.

If war is right let it be declared by the people. You who have your lives to lose, you certainly above all others have the right to decide the momentous issue of war or peace.

Rose Pastor Stokes! And when I mention her name I take off my hat. Here we have another heroic and inspiring comrade. She had her millions of dollars at command. Did her wealth restrain her an instant? On the contrary her supreme devotion to the cause outweighed all considerations of a financial or social nature. She went out boldly to plead the cause of the working class and they rewarded her high courage with a ten years’ sentence to the penitentiary. Think of it! Ten years! What atrocious crime had she committed? What frightful things had she said? Let me answer candidly. She said nothing more than I have said here this afternoon. I want to admit—I want to admit without reservation that if Rose Pastor Stokes is guilty of crime, so am I. If she is guilty for the brave part she has taken in this testing time of human souls I would not be cowardly enough to plead my innocence. And if she ought to be sent to the penitentiary for ten years, so ought I without a doubt.

What did Rose Pastor Stokes say? Why, she said that a government could not at the same time serve both the profiteers and the victims of the profiteers. Is it not true? Certainly it is and no one can successfully dispute it.

Roosevelt said a thousand times more in the very same paper, the Kansas City Star. Roosevelt said vauntingly the other day that he would be heard if he went to jail. He knows very well that he is taking no risk of going to jail. He is shrewdly laying his wires for the Republican nomination in 1920 and he is an adept in making the appeal of the demagogue. He would do anything to discredit the Wilson administration that he may give himself and his party all credit. That is the only rivalry there is between the two old capitalist parties—the Republican Party and the Democratic Party—the political twins of the master class. They are not going to have any friction between them this fall. They are all patriots in this campaign, and they are going to combine to prevent the election of any disloyal Socialist. I have never heard anyone tell of any difference between these corrupt capitalist parties. Do you know of any? I certainly do not. The situation is that one is in and the other trying to break in, and that is substantially the only difference between them.

Rose Pastor Stokes never uttered a word she did not have a legal, constitutional right to utter. But her message to the people, the message that stirred their thoughts and opened their eyes—that must be suppressed; her voice must be silenced. And so she was promptly subjected to a mock trial and sentenced to the penitentiary for ten years. Her conviction was a foregone conclusion. The trial of a Socialist in a capitalist court is at best a farcical affair. What ghost of a chance had she in a court with a packed jury and a corporation tool on the bench? Not the least in the world. And so she goes to the penitentiary for ten years if they carry out their brutal and disgraceful graceful program. For my part I do not think they will. In fact I feel sure they will not. If the war were over tomorrow the prison doors would open to our people. They simply mean to silence the voice of protest during the war.

What a compliment it is to the Socialist movement to be thus persecuted for the sake of the truth! The truth alone will make the people free. And for this reason the truth must not be permitted to reach the people. The truth has always been dangerous to the rule of the rogue, the exploiter, the robber. So the truth must be ruthlessly suppressed. That is why they are trying to destroy the Socialist movement; and every time they strike a blow they add a thousand new voices to the hosts proclaiming that socialism is the hope of humanity and has come to emancipate the people from their final form of servitude.

How good this sip of cool water from the hand of a comrade! It is as refreshing as if it were out on the desert waste. And how good it is to look into your glowing faces this afternoon! You are really good looking to me, I assure you. And I am glad there are so many of you. Your tribe has increased amazingly since first I came here. You used to be so few and far between. A few years ago when you struck a town the first thing you had to do was to see if you could locate a Socialist; and you were pretty lucky if you struck the trail of one before you left town. If he happened to be the only one and he is still living, he is now regarded as a pioneer and pathfinder; he holds a place of honor in your esteem, and he has lodgment in the hearts of all who have come after him. It is far different now. You can hardly throw a stone in the dark without hitting a Socialist. They are everywhere in increasing numbers; and what marvelous changes are taking place in the people!

Some years ago I was to speak at Warren in this state. It happened to be at the time that President McKinley was assassinated. In common with all others I deplored that tragic event. There is not a Socialist who would have been guilty of that crime. We do not attack individuals. We do not seek to avenge ourselves upon those opposed to our faith. We have no fight with individuals as such. We are capable of pitying those who hate us. We do not hate them; we know better; we would freely give them a cup of water if they needed it. There is no room in our hearts for hate, except for the system, the social system in which it is possible for one man to amass a stupendous fortune doing nothing, while millions of others suffer and struggle and agonize and die for the bare necessities of existence.

President McKinley, as I have said, had been assassinated. I was first to speak at Portsmouth, having been booked there some time before the assassination. Promptly the Christian ministers of Portsmouth met in special session and passed a resolution declaring that “Debs, more than any other person, was responsible for the assassination of our beloved President.” It was due to the doctrine that Debs was preaching that this crime was committed, according to these patriotic parsons, and so this pious gentry, the followers of the meek and lowly Nazarene, concluded that I must not be permitted to enter the city. And they had the mayor issue an order to that effect. I went there soon after, however. I was to speak at Warren, where President McKinley’s double-cousin was postmaster. I went there and registered. I was soon afterward invited to leave the hotel. I was exceedingly undesirable that day. I was served with notice that the hall would not be opened and that I would not be permitted to speak. I sent back word to the mayor by the only Socialist left in town—and he only remained because they did not know he was there—I sent word to the mayor that I would speak in Warren that night, according to schedule, or I would leave there in a box for the return turn trip.

The Grand Army of the Republic called a special meeting and then marched to the hall in full uniform and occupied the front seats in order to silence me if my speech did not suit them. I went to the hall, however, found it open, and made my speech. There was no interruption. I told the audience frankly who was responsible for the President’s assassination. I said: “As long as there is misery caused by robbery at the bottom there will be assassination at the top.” I showed them, evidently to their satisfaction, that it was their own capitalist system that was responsible; the system that had impoverished and brutalized the ancestors of the poor witless boy who had murdered the President. Yes, I made my speech that night and it was well received but when I left there I was still an “undesirable citizen.”

Some years later I returned to Warren. It seemed that the whole population was out for the occasion. I was received with open arms. I was no longer a demagogue; no longer a fanatic or an undesirable citizen. I had become exceedingly respectable simply because the Socialists had increased in numbers and socialism had grown in influence and power. If ever I become entirely respectable I shall be quite sure that I have outlived myself.

It is the minorities who have made the history of this world. It is the few who have had the courage to take their places at the front; who have been true enough to themselves to speak the truth that was in them; who have dared oppose the established order of things; who have espoused the cause of the suffering, struggling poor; who have upheld without regard to personal consequences the cause of freedom and righteousness. It is they, the heroic, self-sacrificing few who have made the history of the race and who have paved the way from barbarism to civilization. The many prefer to remain upon the popular side. They lack the courage and vision to join a despised minority that stands for a principle; they have not the moral fiber that withstands, endures and finally conquers. They are to be pitied and not treated with contempt for they cannot help their cowardice. But, thank God, in every age and in every nation there have been the brave and self-reliant few, and they have been sufficient to their historic task; and we, who are here today, are under infinite obligations to them because they suffered, they sacrificed, they went to jail, they had their bones broken upon the wheel, they were burned at the stake and their ashes scattered to the winds by the hands of hate and revenge in their struggle to leave the world better for us than they found it for themselves. We are under eternal obligations to them because of what they did and what they suffered for us and the only way we can discharge that obligation is by doing the best we can for those who are to come after us. And this is the high purpose of every Socialist on earth. Everywhere they are animated by the same lofty principles; everywhere they have the same noble ideals; everywhere they are clasping hands across national boundary lines; everywhere they are calling one another Comrade, the blessed word that springs from the heart of unity and bursts into blossom upon the lips. Each passing day they are getting into closer touch all along the battle line, waging the holy war of the working class of the world against the ruling and exploiting class of the world. They make many mistakes and they profit by them all. They encounter numerous defeats, and grow stronger through them all. They never take a backward step.

The heart of the international Socialist never beats a retreat.

They are pressing forward, here, there and everywhere, in all the zones that girdle the globe. Everywhere these awakening workers, these class-conscious proletarians, these hardy sons and daughters of honest toil are proclaiming the glad tidings of the coming emancipation, everywhere their hearts are attuned to the most sacred cause that ever challenged men and women to action in all the history of the world. Everywhere they are moving toward democracy and the dawn; marching toward the sunrise, their faces all aglow with the light of the coming day. These are the Socialists, the most zealous and enthusiastic crusaders the world has ever known. They are making history that will light up the horizon of coming generations, for their mission is the emancipation of the human race. They have been reviled; they have been ridiculed, persecuted, imprisoned and have suffered death, but they have been sufficient to themselves and their cause, and their final triumph is but a question of time.

Do you wish to hasten the day of victory? Join the Socialist Party! Don’t wait for the morrow. Join now! Enroll your name without fear and take your place where you belong. You cannot do your duty by proxy. You have got to do it yourself and do it squarely and then as you look yourself in the face you will have no occasion to blush. You will know what it is to be a real man or woman. You will lose nothing; you will gain everything. Not only will you lose nothing but you will find something of infinite value, and that something will be yourself. And that is your supreme need—to find yourself—to really know yourself and your purpose in life.

You need at this time especially to know that you are fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder. You need to know that you were not created to work and produce and impoverish yourself to enrich an idle exploiter. You need to know that you have a mind to improve, a soul to develop, and a manhood to sustain.

You need to know that it is your duty to rise above the animal plane of existence. You need to know that it is for you to know something about literature and science and art. You need to know that you are verging on the edge of a great new world. You need to get in touch with your comrades and fellow workers and to become conscious of your interests, your powers and your possibilities as a class. You need to know that you belong to the great majority of mankind. You need to know that as long as you are ignorant, as long as you are indifferent, as long as you are apathetic, unorganized and content, you will remain exactly where you are. You will be exploited; you will be degraded, and you will have to beg for a job. You will get just enough for your slavish toil to keep you in working order, and you will be looked down upon with scorn and contempt by the very parasites that live and luxuriate out of your sweat and unpaid labor.

If you would be respected you have got to begin by respecting yourself. Stand up squarely and look yourself in the face and see a man! Do not allow yourself to fall into the predicament of the poor fellow who, after he had heard a Socialist speech concluded that he too ought to be a Socialist. The argument he had heard was unanswerable. “Yes,” he said to himself, “all the speaker said was true and I certainly ought to join the party.” But after a while he allowed his ardor to cool and he soberly concluded that by joining the party he might anger his boss and lose his job. He then concluded: “I can’t take the chance.” That night he slept alone. There was something on his conscience and it resulted in a dreadful dream. Men always have such dreams when they betray themselves. A Socialist is free to go to bed with a clear conscience. He goes to sleep with his manhood and he awakens and walks forth in the morning with his self-respect. He is unafraid and he can look the whole world in the face, without a tremor and without a blush. But this poor weakling who lacked the courage to do the bidding of his reason and conscience was haunted by a startling dream and at midnight he awoke in terror, bounded from his bed and exclaimed: “My God, there is nobody in this room.” He was absolutely right. There was nobody in that room.

How would you like to sleep in a room that had nobody in it? It is an awful thing to be nobody. That is certainly a state of mind to get out of, the sooner the better.

There is a great deal of hope for Baker, Ruthenberg and Wagenknecht who are in jail for their convictions; but for the fellow that is nobody there is no pardoning power. He is “in” for life. Anybody can be nobody; but it takes a man to be somebody.

To turn your back on the corrupt Republican Party and the still more corrupt Democratic Party—the gold-dust lackeys of the ruling class counts for still more after you have stepped out of those popular and corrupt capitalist parties to join a minority party that has an ideal, that stands for a principle, and fights for a cause. This will be the most important change you have ever made and the time will come when you will thank me for having made the suggestion. It was the day of days for me. I remember it well. It was like passing from midnight darkness to the noontide light of day. It came almost like a flash and found me ready. It must have been in such a flash that great, seething, throbbing Russia, prepared by centuries of slavery and tears and martyrdom, was transformed from a dark continent to a land of living light.

There is something splendid, something sustaining and inspiring in the prompting of the heart to be true to yourself and to the best you know, especially in a crucial hour of your life. You are in the crucible today, my Socialist comrades! You are going to be tried by fire, to what extent no one knows. If you are weak-fibered and fainthearted you will be lost to the Socialist movement. We will have to bid you goodbye. You are not the stuff of which revolutions are made. We are sorry for you unless you chance to be an “intellectual.” The “intellectuals,” many of them, are already gone. No loss on our side nor gain on the other.

I am always amused in the discussion of the “intellectual” phase of this question. It is the same old standard under which the rank and file are judged. What would become of the sheep if they had no shepherd to lead them out of the wilderness into the land of milk and honey?

Oh, yes, “I am your shepherd and ye are my mutton.”

They would have us believe that if we had no “intellectuals” we would have no movement. They would have our party, the rank and file, controlled by the “intellectual” bosses as the Republican and Democratic parties are controlled. These capitalist parties are managed by “intellectual” leaders and the rank and file are sheep that follow the bellwether to the shambles.

In the Republican and Democratic parties you of the common herd are not expected to think. That is not only unnecessary but might lead you astray. That is what the “intellectual” leaders are for. They do the thinking and you do the voting. They ride in carriages at the front where the band plays and you tramp in the mud, bringing up the rear with great enthusiasm.

The capitalist system affects to have great regard and reward for intellect, and the capitalists give themselves full credit for having superior brains. When we have ventured to say that the time would come when the working class would rule they have bluntly answered “Never! it requires brains to rule.” The workers of course have none. And they certainly try hard to prove it by proudly supporting the political parties of their masters under whose administration they are kept in poverty and servitude.

The government is now operating its railroads for the more effective prosecution of the war. Private ownership has broken down utterly and the government has had to come to the rescue. We have always said that the people ought to own the railroads and operate them for the benefit of the people. We advocated that twenty years ago. But the capitalists and their henchmen emphatically objected. “You have got to have brains to run the railroads,” they tauntingly retorted. Well, the other day McAdoo, the governor-general of the railroads under government operation; discharged all the high-salaried presidents and other supernumeraries. In other words, he fired the “brains” bodily and yet all the trains have been coming and going on schedule time. Have you noticed any change for the worse since the “brains” are gone? It is a brainless system now, being operated by “hands.” But a good deal more efficiently than it had been operated by so-called “brains” before. And this determines infallibly the quality of their vaunted, high-priced capitalist “brains.” It is the kind you can get at a reasonable figure at the market place. They have always given themselves credit for having superior brains and given this as the reason for the supremacy of their class. It is true that they have the brains that indicates the cunning of the fox, the wolf, but as for brains denoting real intelligence and the measure of intellectual capacity they are the most woefully ignorant people on earth. Give me a hundred capitalists just as you find them here in Ohio and let me ask them a dozen simple questions about the history of their own country and I will prove to you that they are as ignorant and unlettered as any you may find in the so-called lower class. They know little of history; they are strangers to science; they are ignorant of sociology and blind to art but they know how to exploit, how to gouge, how to rob, and do it with legal sanction. They always proceed legally for the reaon that the class which has the power to rob upon a large scale has also the power to control the government and legalize their robbery. I regret that lack of time prevents me from discussing this phase of the question more at length.

They are continually talking about your patriotic duty. It is not their but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches.

And now among other things they are urging you to “cultivate” war gardens, while at the same time a government war report just issued shows that practically 52 percent of the arable, tillable soil is held out of use by the landlords, speculators and profiteers. They themselves do not cultivate the soil. They could not if they would. Nor do they allow others to cultivate it. They keep it idle to enrich themselves, to pocket the millions of dollars of unearned increment. Who is it that makes this land valuable while it is fenced in and kept out of use? It is the people. Who pockets this tremendous accumulation of value? The landlords. And these landlords who toil not and spin not are supreme among American “patriots.”

In passing I suggest that we stop a moment to think about the term “landlord.” “LANDLORD!” Lord of the Land! The lord of the land is indeed a superpatriot. This lord who practically owns the earth tells you that we are fighting this war to make the world safe for democracy—he who shuts out all humanity from his private domain; he who profiteers at the expense of the people who have been slain and mutilated by multiplied thousands, under pretense of being the great American patriot. It is he, this identical patriot who is in fact the archenemy of the people; it is he that you need to wipe from power. It is he who is a far greater menace to your liberty and your well-being than the Prussian Junkers on the other side of the Atlantic ocean.

Fifty-two percent of the land kept out of use, according to their own figures! They tell you that there is an alarming shortage of flour and that you need to produce more. They tell you further that you have got to save wheat so that more can be exported for the soldiers who are fighting on the other side, while half of your tillable soil is held out of use by the landlords and profiteers. What do you think of that?

Again, they tell you there is a coal famine now in the state of Ohio. The state of Indiana, where I live, is largely underlaid with coal. There is practically an inexhaustible supply. The coal is banked beneath our very feet. It is within touch all about us—all we can possibly use and more. And here are the miners, ready to enter the mines. Here is the machinery ready to be put into operation to increase the output to any desired capacity. And three weeks ago a national officer of the United Mine Workers issued and published a statement to the Labor Department of the United States government to the effect that the 600,000 coal miners in the United States at this time, when they talk about a coal famine, are not permitted to work more than half time. I have been around over Indiana for many years. I have often been in the coal fields; again and again I have seen the miners idle while at the same time there was a scarcity of coal.

They tell you that you ought to buy your coal right away; that you may freeze next winter if you do not. At the same time they charge you three prices for your coal! Oh, yes, this ought to suit you perfectly if you vote the Republican or Democratic ticket and believe in the private ownership of the coal mines and their operation for private profit.

The coal mines now being privately owned, the operators want a scarcity of coal so they can boost their prices and enrich themselves accordingly. If an abundance of coal were mined there would be lower prices and this would not suit the mine owners. Prices soar and profits increase when there is a scarcity of coal.

It is also apparent that there is collusion between the mine owners and the railroads. The mine owners declare there are no cars while the railroad men insist that there is no coal. And between them they delude, defraud and rob the people.

Let us illustrate a vital point. Here is the coal in great deposits all about us; here are the miners and the machinery of production. Why should there be a coal famine upon the one hand and an army of idle and hungry miners on the other hand? Is it not an incredibly stupid situation, an almost idiotic if not criminal state of affairs?

We Socialists say: “Take possession of the mines in the name of the people.” Set the miners at work and give every miner the equivalent of all the coal he produces. Reduce the work day in proportion to the development of productive machinery. That would at once settle the matter of a coal famine and of idle miners. But that is too simple a proposition and the people will have none of it. The time will come, however, when the people will be driven to take such action for there is no other efficient and permanent solution of the problem.

In the present system the miner, a wage slave, gets down into a pit 300 or 400 feet deep. He works hard and produces a ton of coal. But he does not own an ounce of it. That coal belongs to some mine-owning plutocrat who may be in New York or sailing the high seas in his private yacht; or he may be hobnobbing with royalty in the capitals of Europe, and that is where most of them were before the war was declared. The industrial captain, so- called, who lives in Paris, London, Vienna or some other center of gaiety does not have to work to revel in luxury. He owns the mines and he might as well own the miners.

That is where you workers are and where you will remain as long as you give your support to the political parties of your masters and exploiters. You vote these miners out of a job and reduce them to corporation vassals and paupers.

We Socialists say: “Take possession of the mines; call the miner to work and return to him the equivalent of the value of his product.” He can then build himself a comfortable home; live in it; enjoy it with his family. He can provide himself and his wife and children with clothes—good clothes—not shoddy; wholesome food in abundance, education for the children, and the chance to live the lives of civilized human beings, while at the same time the people will get coal at just what it costs to mine it.

Of course that would be socialism as far as it goes. But you are not in favor of that program. It is too visionary because it is so simple and practical. So you will have to continue to wait until winter is upon you before you get your coal and then pay three prices for it because you insist upon voting a capitalist ticket and giving your support to the present wage-slave system. The trouble with you is that you are still in a capitalist state of mind.

Lincoln said: “If you want that thing that is the thing you want”; and you will get it to your heart’s content. But some good day you will wake up and realize that a change is needed and wonder why you did not know it long before. Yes, a change is certainly needed, not merely a change of party but a change of system; a change from slavery to freedom and from despotism to democracy, wide as the world. When this change comes at last, we shall rise from brutehood to brotherhood, and to accomplish it we have to educate and organize the workers industrially and politically, but not along the zigzag craft lines laid down by Gompers, who through all of his career has favored the master class. You never hear the capitalist press speak of him nowadays except in praise and adulation. He has recently come into great prominence as a patriot. You never find him on the unpopular side of a great issue. He is always conservative, satisfied to leave the labor problem to be settled finally at the banqueting board with Elihu Root, Andrew Carnegie and the rest of the plutocratic civic federationists. When they drink wine and smoke scab cigars together the labor question is settled so far as they are concerned.

And while they are praising Gompers they are denouncing the I.W.W. There are few men who have the courage to say a word in favor of the I.W.W. I have. Let me say here that I have great respect for the I.W.W. Far greater than I have for their infamous detractors.

Listen! There has just been published a pamphlet called “The Truth About the I.W.W.” It has been issued after long and thorough investigation by five men of unquestioned standing in the capitalist world. At the head of these investigators was Professor John Graham Brooks of Harvard University, and next to him John A. Fish of the Survey of the Religious Organizations of Pittsburgh, and Mr. Bruere, the government investigator. Five of these prominent men conducted an impartial examination of the I.W.W. To quote their own words they “followed its trail.” They examined into its doings beginning at Bisbee where the “patriots,” the cowardly business men, the arch-criminals, made up the mob that deported 1,200 workingmen under the most brutal conditions, charging them with being members of the I.W.W. when they knew it to be false.

It is only necessary to label a man “I.W.W.” to have him lynched as they did Praeger, an absolutely innocent man. He was a Socialist and bore a German name, and that was his crime. A rumor was started that he was disloyal and he was promptly seized and lynched by the cowardly mob of so-called “patriots.”

War makes possible all such crimes and outrages. And war comes in spite of the people. When Wall Street says war the press says war and the pulpit promptly follows with its Amen. In every age the pulpit has been on the side of the rulers and not on the side of the people. That is one reason why the preachers so fiercely denounce the I.W.W.

Take the time to read this pamphlet about the I.W.W. Don’t take the word of Wall Street and its press as final. Read this report by five impartial and highly reputable men who made their investigation to know the truth, and that they might tell the truth to the American people. They declare that the I.W.W. in all its career never committed as much violence against the ruling class as the ruling class has committed against the I.W.W.

You are not now reading any reports in the daily press about the trial at Chicago, are you? They used to publish extensive reports when the trial first began, and to prate about what they proposed to prove against the I.W.W. as a gigantic conspiracy against the government. The trial has continued until they have exhausted all their testimony and they have not yet proven violence in a single instance. No, not one! They are utterly without incriminating testimony and yet 112 men are in the dock after lying in jail for months without the shadow of a crime upon them save that of belonging to the I.W.W. That is enough it would seem to convict any man of any crime and send his body to prison and his soul to hell. Just whisper the name of the I.W.W. and you are branded as a disloyalist. And the reason for this is wholly to the credit of the I.W.W., for whatever may be charged against it the I.W.W. has always fought for the bottom dog. And that is why Haywood is despised and prosecuted while Gompers is lauded and glorified by the same gang.

Now what you workers need is to organize, not along craft lines but along revolutionary industrial lines. All of you workers in a given industry, regardless of your trade or occupation, should belong to one and the same union.

Political action and industrial action must supplement and sustain each other. You will never vote the Socialist republic into existence. You will have to lay its foundations in industrial organization. The industrial union is the forerunner of industrial democracy. In the shop where the workers are associated is where industrial democracy has its beginning. Organize according to your industries! Get together in every department of industrial service! United and acting together for the common good your power is invincible.

When you have organized industrially you will soon learn that you can manage as well as operate industry. You will soon realize that you do not need the idle masters and exploiters. They are simply parasites. They do not employ you as you imagine but you employ them to take from you what you produce, and that is how they function in industry. You can certainly dispense with them in that capacity. You do not need them to depend upon for your jobs. You can never be free while you work and live by their sufferance. You must own your own tools and then you will control your own jobs, enjoy the products of your own labor and be free men instead of industrial slaves.

Organize industrially and make your organization complete. Then unite in the Socialist Party. Vote as you strike and strike as you vote.

Your union and your party embrace the working class. The Socialist Party expresses the interests, hopes and aspirations of the toilers of all the world.

Get your fellow workers into the industrial union and the political party to which they rightly belong, especially this year, this historic year in which the forces of labor will assert themselves as they never have before. This is the year that calls for men and women who have courage, the manhood and womanhood to do their duty.

Get into the Socialist Party and take your place in its ranks; help to inspire the weak and strengthen the faltering, and do your share to speed the coming of the brighter and better day for us all.

When we unite and act together on the industrial field and when we vote together on election day we shall develop the supreme power of the one class that can and will bring permanent peace to the world. We shall then have the intelligence, the courage and the power for our great task. In due time industry will be organized on a cooperative basis. We shall conquer the public power. We shall then transfer the title deeds of the railroads, the telegraph lines, the mines, mills and great industries to the people in their collective capacity; we shall take possession of all these social utilities in the name of the people. We shall then have industrial democracy. We shall be a free nation whose government is of and by and for the people.

And now for all of us to do our duty! The clarion call is ringing in our ears and we cannot falter without being convicted of treason to ourselves and to our great cause.

Do not worry over the charge of treason to your masters, but be concerned about the treason that involves yourselves. Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth.

Yes, in good time we are going to sweep into power in this nation and throughout the world. We are going to destroy all enslaving and degrading capitalist institutions and re-create them as free and humanizing institutions. The world is daily changing before our eyes. The sun of capitalism is setting; the sun of socialism is rising. It is our duty to build the new nation and the free republic. We need industrial and social builders. We Socialists are the builders of the beautiful world that is to be. We are all pledged to do our part. We are inviting—aye challenging you this afternoon in the name of your own manhood and womanhood to join us and do your part.

In due time the hour will strike and this great cause triumphant—the greatest in history—will proclaim the emancipation of the working class and the brotherhood of all mankind.

#USA #syndicalisme

Erich Vad zur Stationierung von Mittelstreckenraketen der USA : Es droht ein Nuklearkrieg in Europa
▻https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/geopolitik/erich-vad-zur-stationierung-von-us-mittelstreckenraketen-nuklearkri

Une décision suicidaire du gouvernement allemand expose les habitants du pays au risque d’une frappe nucléare russe. Le général Erich Vad explique le contexte militaire et politique. Il insiste sur la différence avec les décisions de stationnement d’armes du passé dans un context de dialogue entre les blocs militaires.

4.9.2024 von Erich Vad - Durch die Stationierung von Mittelstreckenraketen verlagern die USA Sicherheitsrisiken auf Deutschland.

Medial kaum kritisch gewürdigt und ohne öffentliche Diskussion vereinbarten die Regierung der USA und die deutsche Bundesregierung am Rande des Nato-Gipfels am 10. Juli 2024, ab 2026 Raketen, Marschflugkörper und Überschallwaffen mit Reichweiten zwischen 460 und 3000 Kilometern in Deutschland aufzustellen.

In der Begründung heißt es, dass eine Befähigungslücke der Nato bei landgestützten Waffensystemen gegenüber vergleichbaren russischen Systemen, wie etwa die Iskander-Raketensysteme im Oblast Kaliningrad, geschlossen werden müsse. Bei der Implementierung geht es vor allem darum, den USA im Kriegsfall aus Deutschland heraus den Einsatz von Waffensystemen zu ermöglichen, mit denen sie mit minimalen Flugzeiten der Geschosse in die Tiefe Russlands zur Neutralisierung entsprechender russischer Basen wirken können, ohne dass sich die USA selbst gefährden.

Moskau wird reagieren – Deutschland rückt ins Visier russischer Nuklearwaffen

Im schlimmsten Fall wird damit die Sicherheit Deutschlands, vielleicht sogar Europas, von der Sicherheit Nordamerikas getrennt werden und ein auf Europa beschränkter Nuklearkrieg möglich. Ein außen- und sicherheitspolitisches No-Go aus deutscher Sicht!

Als Folge wird Russland mit einer weiteren Stationierung von Mittelstreckensystemen im Westen des Landes beziehungsweise in Belarus reagieren, die unser Land noch stärker ins Visier russischer Nuklearwaffen nehmen. Damit beginnt zwangsläufig eine Aufrüstungsspirale mit Deutschland im Zentrum.

Die bilaterale amerikanisch-deutsche Vereinbarung reagiert zwar auf eine entsprechende russische Bedrohung und erhöht beziehungsweise verstärkt die militärische Abschreckung des Nato-Bündnisses. Da jedoch Deutschland im Kriegsfall das Aufmarschgebiet und die logistische Plattform des Bündnisses wäre, wird die in Gänze schutzlose deutsche Bevölkerung einem sehr hohen Risiko ausgesetzt, ohne dass sie dazu selbst gefragt wird. Das Risiko im Kriegsfall betrifft zudem exklusiv unser Land und wird nicht von anderen Bündnispartnern geteilt.

Beim Nato-Nachrüstungsbeschluss 1979 war das noch ganz anders: Damals waren weitere Bündnispartner bereit, Raketensysteme der USA auf ihrem Territorium zu stationieren. Die Tragweite der Entscheidung wurde mit anderen Bündnispartnern geteilt und darüber hinaus mit Abrüstungsmaßnahmen verbunden.

Gerade Deutschland legte damals sehr viel Wert darauf, sich nicht, so wie bei dem kürzlich getroffenen Beschluss, sicherheitspolitisch singularisieren zu lassen. Der damalige Bundeskanzler Helmut Schmidt knüpfte sein politisches Überleben an diese bündnispolitisch wichtige und hinsichtlich der nationalen Interessenlage existenzielle Frage. Helmut Kohl setzte schließlich als Bundeskanzler den Beschluss 1983 regierungsseitig durch – nach einer ausgiebigen Befassung und Abstimmung im Deutschen Bundestag.

Eine breite gesellschaftliche und politische Debatte ist nötig

Zudem gab es eine breite, kontroverse, innenpolitische sowie bündnisinterne Diskussion. Eine damals relativ neue politische Partei, die Grünen, profilierte sich in dieser Debatte und führte die öffentliche Frontstellung gegen eine einseitige Stationierung an. Schließlich erfolgte zwar die Stationierung, dies aber im aus deutscher Sicht unverzichtbaren Verbund mit Diplomatie, Dialog und deeskalierenden Abrüstungs- und Rüstungskontrollmaßnahmen.

Die jetzige Stationierungsabsicht dagegen hat zahlreiche kritische, hinterfragbare und politisch zu diskutierende Schwachpunkte:

Zunächst handelt es sich um eine lediglich bilaterale, nicht eine gemeinsam im Nato-Bündnis getroffene Vereinbarung. Die getroffene bilaterale Entscheidung erfolgte zudem nicht nach einer entsprechenden vertieften bündnisinternen Diskussion. Die Stationierung erfolgt entgegen dem Prinzip der Lasten- und Risikoteilung ausschließlich in Deutschland, das sich damit politisch und bezogen auf seine Sicherheit dramatisch exponiert und singularisiert. Die Stationierung der amerikanischen Waffen in Deutschland unterliegt im Kriegsfall nicht einer souveränen, nationalen Entscheidungsmacht. Zumindest ist das in der Erklärung nicht geregelt.

Eine öffentliche, politische und parlamentarische Diskussion und Befassung dieses schwerwiegenden Beschlusses unterblieb bislang. Dabei hat er sowohl sicherheitsfördernde, aber eben auch massiv unsere Sicherheit gefährdende Seiten. Die Stationierungserklärung ermöglicht gerade mit Blick auf die Hyperschallwaffen eine Überraschungsoption gegenüber Russland, die im Kriegsfall zu unkontrollierbaren Fehlperzeptionen und Gegenaktionen führen könnte, die ausschließlich unser Land betreffen würden.

Zudem sind eine entsprechende Adaptierung der nuklearen Zielplanung Russlands gegenüber Deutschland sowie eine nukleare Nachrüstung Russlands absehbar.

Außerdem gibt es keine politische Verbindung der beabsichtigten Stationierung mit Abrüstungsangeboten und -maßnahmen. Auch die Möglichkeit, mit Russland über die Stationierung sicherheitsfördernd für Deutschland in Austausch zu treten, ist nicht vorgesehen.

In der notwendig zu führenden politischen Debatte ist es dringend geboten, diese kritischen Punkte zu thematisieren. Zudem sollte die Bundesregierung mit der neuen amerikanischen Administration im Herbst 2024 über ein Nachfolgeabkommen des INF-Vertrages mit entsprechenden Verifikationsmechanismen sprechen, das aus europäischer Sicht unverzichtbar ist für unsere Sicherheit.

Zum Autor

Dr. Erich Vad ist Brigadegeneral a.D. und war von 2007 bis 2013 Gruppenleiter im Bundeskanzleramt, Sekretär des Bundessicherheitsrates und Militärpolitischer Berater der damaligen Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel .

#politique_internationale #armement #OTAN #USA #Allemagne #guerre_nucléaire

▻https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/907476711645892608/pu/vid/480x480/ybE9q1xRX6h81CD-.mp4

▻https://x.com/karimbitar/status/907476973571768320

Emmanuel Todd : « La Russie gagne la guerre et l’Europe implose »

La défaite de l’occident, ce n’est pas la victoire de la Russie, c’est une implosion de l’occident.
Cf. L’augmentation de la mortalité infantile aux usa

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=AISnPMPUl4c

#France #Russie #ukraine #USA #ue #union_européenne #économie #géopolitique #désindustrialisation #inégalités #Emmanuel_Todd #Angleterre

Ukraine’s Hiroshima Moment is Drawing Closer (The Consequences of Neocon Madness)
▻https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraine-s-hiroshima-moment-is-drawing-closer-the-consequences-of-neocon-madness/ar-AA1pksAP

79 ans après l’extermination de la population civile d’Hiroshima et de Nagasaki per les bombes nucléaires états-uniennes les habitants de Kiev et Charkiv risquent le même destin à cause d’une situation stratégique comaprable.

https://heise.cloudimg.io/width/700/q75.png-lossy-75.webp-lossy-75.foil1/_www-heise-de_/imgs/18/4/6/6/2/4/1/0/shutterstock_2210646235-71854c2c426dc61a.jpeg

D’habitude les actualités du front ne me préoccupent pas trop. A Berlin nous nous trouvons toujours à 1343 km de Kiev et à 1823 km de Charkiv. Les années de guerre « froide » jusqu’en 1989 nous ont enseigné que les menaces et déclarations agressives mutuelles des maîtres du monde sont ce qu’elles sont, des menaces et déclarations, des mots et que des mots.

Cette leçon est en train de perdre sa raison d’être. Aujourd’hui la Russie se trouve dans une situation similaire à celle des États Unis en été 1945. Ses dirigeants discutent sans doute une frappe nucléraire contre l’Ukraine. Cet article explique pourquoi la Russie pourrait essayer d’accelérer la défaite prévisible de l’Ukraine par une attaque avec des fusées nucléaires « tactiques ».

Nous ne somme pas en mesure d’empêcher les dirigeants russes de jouer la carte nucléaire ni d’empêcher les impérialistes états-unien de poursuivre leur politique d’escalation, mais nous pouvons revendiquer de la part de nos gouvernements d’abandonner la livraison d’armes aux marionettes états-uniennes de Kiev et de s’engager dans des pourparlers de paix. C’est l’unique voie qui peut mener à une fin de cette guerre qui évite la déstruction totale du pays.

Nous avons immédiatement besoin d’un mouvemant pour la paix.

23.8.2024 by Thomas Palley - In August 1945, the US atom bombed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since then, nuclear weapons have never been used in conflict. That may soon change as Ukraine faces the increasing likelihood of a Hiroshima moment.

Conditions in Ukraine increasingly give Russia military and geopolitical cause to use tactical nuclear weapons. Though Russia will use them, the US and NATO are deeply implicated in the process. They are in the grip of Neocon madness which casually dismisses potentially catastrophic consequences and blocks all off-ramps.

Lessons from Hiroshima and Nagasaki

One way to understand the current moment is via the history of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Those attacks also had military and geopolitical motivations. The former is widely recognized: the latter is not.

According to standard history, in August 1945, Japan was de facto defeated and had signaled willingness to “conditionally” surrender. However, the US wanted “unconditional” surrender. It also estimated conquest of Japan might cost a million US casualties. Consequently, it elected to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thereby achieving unconditional surrender without such casualties.

The geopolitical motivation concerned the Soviet Union. It had declared war on Japan the day after the Hiroshima attack, and the US feared it would conquer Japan’s lightly defended north. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs prevented that by abruptly ending the war. They also sent the Soviet Union a chilling message about US power.

The Ukraine parallel

The Ukraine war has spawned a logic which echoes 1945. The military parallel is clear. Russia wants to bring the war to an acceptable close. Even after it has conquered the Donbass oblasts, it will confront continued attacks from long-range weaponry provided by the US and its NATO junior partners. The resulting loss of Russian lives and damage will be unacceptable. Tactical nuclear weapons can surgically end the conflict, with Ukraine compelled to accept the outcome or face further destruction.

The geopolitical parallel is also clear. In 1945, the US sent a message to the Soviet Union. In Ukraine, tactical nuclear weapons will send a message to the US that continuing its strategy of incremental conflict escalation risks full-blown nuclear war.

Neocon madness: incremental escalation and the straw that breaks the camel’s back

Neoconservatism is a political doctrine which holds never again shall there be a foreign power, like the former Soviet Union, which can challenge US supremacy. The doctrine gives the US the right to impose its will anywhere in the world, which explains US intervention in Ukraine long before Russia’s 2022 invasion. The doctrine initially seeded itself among hardline Republicans, but it has since been adopted by Democrats and is now politically hegemonic.

Since the late 1990s, the Neocon project has driven a slow-motion war against Russia based on a strategy of “incremental escalation”. The first step was incorporation of Central European countries into NATO, which was followed by incorporating the former Soviet Baltic Republics. Thereafter, the US began fomenting anti-Russian sentiment in the former Republics of Georgia and Ukraine. Longer term, it seeks to foster Russia’s disintegration, as advocated by US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in the 1990s.

A similar incremental escalation strategy has marked US/NATO involvement in Ukraine. In the decade prior to the war, Ukraine was the largest recipient of US military aid in Europe and NATO members stalled the Minsk peace process. Thereafter, engagement has been steadily ratcheted up, turning assistance into a proxy war and then into a tacit direct conflict with Russia. The time-line includes sabotaging peace negotiations in early 2022; providing Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, Javelin anti-tank missiles, and artillery ordinance; providing Patriot missile air defense systems; transferring MIG-29 jets from former Warsaw Pact countries; providing ultra-long-range artillery, advanced infantry carriers, and tanks; providing long-range HIMARS rocket systems, and longer-range ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles; and providing modernized F-16 jets.

Side-by side, the US has provided satellite information, while under-cover advisers have assisted long-range missile attacks deep inside Russia which include attacking the Kerch bridge, Russian naval vessels at sea, naval yards in Crimea and in Novorossiysk, Russia’s high altitude AWACS defense system, and an attack on Russia’s anti-ballistic missile defense system.

The incremental escalation strategy aims to tighten the noose, with each tightening supposedly small enough to deny Russia grounds for invoking the nuclear option. However, the strategy risks blindness to the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Ending the war, ending incremental escalation, and restoring deterrence

Walking in the other’s shoes can be enlightening. Russia’s goals are threefold. First, it wants to end the war on acceptable terms. Second, it wants to blunt the US strategy of incremental escalation. Third, it wants to restore credibility of its nuclear deterrent which has been compromised by escalations that have blurred red lines which should not be crossed.

Using tactical nuclear weapons has become increasingly rational as it would achieve all three goals, which is why the situation is dire. The great paradox is deterrence aims to prevent nuclear war, yet restoration of deterrence may require using nuclear weapons as it proves willingness to do so.

Many Neocon supporters have casually talked of “Putin’s nuclear bluff”. The reality is it is the US threat of nuclear retaliation that is a bluff. No sane US politician or general would risk thermo-nuclear war for the sake of Ukraine.

A grim prognosis

There is still time to freeze the sequence. The problem is peace cannot get a hearing. Ukraine’s flawed democracy is suspended, the Azov extremists are in control, and any Ukrainian opposing the war faces imprisonment or worse.

In the US, the Neocons are in charge and the public is fed a Manichean narrative that paints the West as good and Russia as evil. That false narrative is constantly reinforced, and it makes compromise politically and ethically harder.

The prognosis is grim. Ironically, the thing that may prevent a Hiroshima moment is Russian success on the battlefield.
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

#USA #Russie #Ukraine #guerre_nucléaire #guerre #Hiroshima #Nagasaki

Sklavenhalter als Präsidenten - Die Vereinigten Staaten als Herrenvolkdemokratie - Andreas Wehr
▻https://www.andreas-wehr.eu/sklavenhalter-als-praesidenten-die-vereinigten-staaten-als-herrenvolkde

23.07.2024 - Referat auf dem Seminar „Die Gene des US-Kapitalismus“ im Marx-Engels-Zentrum (MEZ) am 6. Juli 2024 [1]

Der mit Abstand wichtigste Staat des Westens, der sich auf den Liberalismus beruft sind die USA. In unzähligen Büchern, Aufsätzen und Reden werden bis heute der amerikanische Liberalismus und das Regierungssystem der USA gewürdigt, ja geradezu verherrlicht. Darunter finden sich berühmte Philosophen und Literaten. Erwähnt sollen hier nur drei, die das Bild der Vereinigten Staaten in den westlichen Ländern bis heute prägen: Alexis de Tocqueville, der die USA in den 1830er Jahren bereiste und anschließend seine Beobachtungen und Wertungen in dem Werk „Über die Demokratie in Amerika“ veröffentlichte. In viele Sprachen übersetzt, wird es noch heute zitiert. Zu nennen ist Hannah Arendt, die als Jüdin vor den Nazis zunächst aus Deutschland und dann aus Frankreich fliehen musste und schließlich in den USA Zuflucht fand. In ihrem Buch „Über die Revolution“ veröffentlichte sie 1963 eine geradezu als Hagiografie der amerikanischen Revolution anzusehende Schrift, die vor allem in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland Verbreitung fand und hier das Bild von den USA prägte. Zu den Bewunderern der USA gehört schließlich Karl Popper mit seinem Werk „Die offene Gesellschaft und ihre Feinde“. Auf Englisch 1945 erschienen, fand es bald eine breite Rezeption in Deutschland und wurde insbesondere von rechten, antikommunistischen Sozialdemokraten wie Helmut Schmidt gewürdigt.

Bis heute sind die USA der wichtigste Exporteur der Ideologie des Liberalismus selbst in die entlegensten Regionen der Welt. Sie scheuen dabei nicht vor der Anwendung von Gewalt zurück. So führen sie Kriege im Namen der Freiheit, zur Verbreitung der liberalen Demokratie, ist es doch diese Gesellschaftsform, die ihnen und den verbündeten westlichen Staaten ökonomische Vorrechte zur Ausbeutung anderer Länder weltweit bietet.

Sklavenhalter als Präsidenten

Mit der Unabhängigkeit der englischen Kolonien in Nordamerika und der Entstehung der Vereinigten Staaten verlagert sich der Schwerpunkt der Sklaverei auf den amerikanischen Kontinent: „Während das britische Empire in seiner Gesamtheit vor allem Iren und Schwarze überrennt, sind Indianer und Schwarze die wichtigsten Opfer des territorialen und kommerziellen Expansionismus zuerst der englischen Kolonien in Amerika und dann der Vereinigten Staaten.“ [2]

Der Unabhängigkeitskrieg der 13 nordamerikanischen Kolonien gegen die britische Kolonialmacht zwischen 1775 und 1783 sowie die 1776 erfolgte Unabhängigkeitserklärung der Konföderation, der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, gegenüber Großbritannien bringen zwar für die weißen Siedler die Freiheit aber nicht für die Negersklaven und schon gar nicht für die verfolgten und unterdrückten Ureinwohner des Kontinents, die Indianer. Die auf Sklaverei beruhende Plantagenwirtschaft bleibt für lange Zeit die wichtigste Grundlage der USA. Die Sklaven selbst „bildeten das, nach dem Boden, beachtlichste Vermögen des Landes; 1860 betrug ihr Wert das Dreifache des Aktienkapitals der Manufaktur- und Bahnindustrie; die im Süden angebaute Baumwolle war lange Zeit die wichtigste Exportware der Vereinigten Staaten und half entscheidend mit, die Importe und die industrielle Entwicklung des Landes zu finanzieren.“ [3]

In den ersten Jahrzehnten der USA waren Sklavenhalter Präsidenten des Landes: „In 32 der ersten 36 Jahre der Existenz der Vereinigten Staaten bekleiden Sklavenhalter aus Virginia den Posten des Präsidenten. Es ist diese Kolonie bzw. dieser auf der Sklaverei basierende Staat, der dem Land seine berühmtesten Staatsmänner liefert; man denke nur an George Washington (den großen militärischen und politischen Vorkämpfer der antienglischen Revolte) oder an Thomas Jefferson und James Madison (die Autoren der Unabhängigkeitserklärung bzw. der Bundesverfassung von 1787): alle drei sind Sklavenhalter (…) Bei den ersten sechzehn Präsidentschaftswahlen zwischen 1788 und 1848 kommt, mit nur vier Ausnahmen, ein Sklavenhalter aus dem Süden in das Weiße Haus“.“[4]

Bei der seinerzeit in den USA praktizierten Sklaverei handelte es sich um eine ihrer brutalsten Formen. Die vorherrschende „Chattel Sklaverei“, wobei chattel auf Deutsch bewegliches Mobiliar (!) bedeutet, erlaubte den getrennten Verkauf von Ehepartnern und selbst von deren Kindern. Nichtdestotrotz preist 1809 „Jefferson die Vereinigten Staaten als ’ein Reich der Freiheit’ gegründet auf eine Verfassung, die die Selbstregierung garantiere. Und dabei ist er ein Sklavenhalter, der die Macht über die Sklaven brutal ausübt und nach Bedarf die einzelnen Mitglieder einer Familie aus seinem Eigentum als getrennte Stücke oder Waren verkauft.“ [5]

Die USA sind „das erste geschichtliche Beispiel eines Rassenstaats“. [6] Als weiße Rassenstaaten galten später auch Südafrika und Rhodesien, das heutige Zimbabwe, beide Regime wurden erst durch den erbitterten Widerstand der unterdrückten indigenen Bevölkerung in langen, blutigen Kämpfen überwunden. Mit Israel existiert noch heute ein Rassenstaat.

Der Liberalismus als Ideologie von der Freiheit des Einzelnen und der Selbstregierung findet seine Verbreitung in Zeiten, in denen zugleich ein erheblicher Teil der Bevölkerung von den liberalen Regimen unterdrückt und gedemütigt werden: „Die Sklaverei dauert nicht trotz des Erfolgs der drei liberalen Revolutionen (gemeint sind hier die niederländische, die englische und die amerikanische, A.W.) fort; im Gegenteil, sie erfährt ihre größte Entfaltung im Gefolge dieses Erfolgs.“ Losurdo zitiert dazu den britischen Historiker Robin Blackburn: „’Die Zahl der Sklaven auf dem amerikanischen Kontinent betrug etwa 330.000 im Jahr 1700, fast drei Millionen 1800, um schließlich ihren Höchststand von über sechs Millionen in den 50er Jahren des 19. Jahrhunderts zu erreichen.’ Entscheidend beigetragen zum Aufstieg dieser Institution, die ein Synonym für die absolute Macht des Menschen über den Menschen darstellt, hat die liberale Gesellschaft.“ [7]

In seinem 2010 veröffentlichten Buch „La non-violenza. Una storia fuori da mito“ (auf Deutsch erschien es 2015 unter dem Titel „Gewaltlosigkeit. Eine Gegengeschichte“) zieht der italienische Philosoph und Historiker folgendes Resümee: „In Ländern wie Frankreich und England bereitete der Sieg der liberalen und demokratischen Ordnung dem kolonialen Expansionismus keineswegs ein Ende, sondern gab ihm weiteren Impuls. Die Entstehung der Vereinigten Staaten und der amerikanischen Demokratie schließlich führte zu einer Intensivierung der Kriege gegen die Indianer, die jetzt mehr denn je der Enteignung, Deportation und Dezimierung unterworfen waren. (…) Ähnlich ging in Australien und Neuseeland das Erringen der Selbstregierung, wesentliches Element der Demokratie, Hand in Hand mit den Ausrottungskriegen gegen die Eingeborenen.“ [8]

Während in England die Sklaverei 1772 für rechtswidrig erklärt wird und sie in britischen Kolonien 1834 offiziell aufgehoben wird, geschieht dies in den USA erst 1866, und auch dann nur im Ergebnis des überaus blutigen Bürgerkriegs zwischen der Union des Nordens und der Konföderation des Südens, ein Krieg der mehr Opfer fordert als die USA in beiden Weltkriegen zu beklagen haben. „Auf jeden Fall ging mit dem Ende des Sezessionskriegs ein geschichtlicher Zyklus zu Ende. Obwohl als ihr Zwilling geboren und lange in einer allerdings nicht spannungsfreien Beziehung mit ihr verbunden, bricht der Liberalismus in seiner Gesamtheit nun mit der Sklaverei im eigentlichen Sinne, der rassischen und Erb-Sklaverei.“ [9]

Emanzipation und De-Emanzipation

Doch auf die Emanzipation der Farbigen folgte in der liberalen Gesellschaft der USA eine schmerzhafte Epoche der De-Emanzipation: „Das Ende des Sezessionskriegs eröffnet die glücklichste Periode in der Geschichte der Afroamerikaner, die jetzt die bürgerlichen politischen Rechte erobern und in die Vertretungskörperschaften einziehen. Aber dies ist nur eine Art kurzes Zwischenspiel der Tragödie. Der Kompromiss, der 1877 zwischen den Weißen des Nordens und des Südens geschlossen wird, beinhaltet für die Schwarzen den Verlust der politischen Rechte und oft selbst der bürgerlichen Rechte, wie das Regime der Rassentrennung und die rohe Gewalt der Pogrome und der Lynchjustiz beweisen. Diese Phase von De-Emanzipation im Rahmen einer Gesellschaft, die sich weiterhin ’liberal’ nennt, dauert fast ein Jahrhundert.“ [10]

„Die fast vollständige Streichung der Zensusdiskriminierungen innerhalb der weißen Gemeinschaft geht einher mit der beschleunigten Deportation der Indianer und mit der Tendenz zum Ressentiment und zur Gewalt gegen die Schwarzen. (…) Die scharfe Grenzlinie zwischen Weißen einerseits und Schwarzen und Indianern andererseits begünstigt die Gleichheitstendenz innerhalb der weißen Gemeinschaft. Die Mitglieder einer Klassen- und Hautfarbearistokratie neigen dazu, sich selber als ’Pairs’ zu werten: die den Ausgeschlossenen aufgezwungene Ungleichheit ist die Kehrseite des Gleichheitsverhältnisses, das sich unter denen durchsetzt, die die Macht haben, die ’Niedrigeren’ auszuschließen. (…)“ [11] Im Ergebnis entsteht eine Herrenvolk democracy.

Was die Geschichte der Vereinigten Staaten angeht, so kann „eine ähnliche Betrachtung (…) hinsichtlich der sogenannten ’Progressive Era’ angestellt werden, welche die ersten drei Jahrzehnte des 20. Jahrhunderts umfasst; sicher zeichnet sie sich durch zahlreiche demokratische Reformen aus (die Direktwahl des Senats, das Wahlgeheimnis, die Einführung der Primärwahlen und des Instituts des Referendums usw. werden gewährleistet), stellt aber gleichzeitig für die Indianer (die ihrer letzten Ländereien beraubt und einem unerbittlichen Anpassungsprozess unterzogen werden, der ihnen sogar ihre kulturelle Identität aberkennen will) und für die Schwarzen (Zielscheibe des brutalen Terrors des Ku-Klux-Klan) eine besonders tragische Periode dar.“ [12]

Bis weit in das 20. Jahrhundert hinein ist im Süden der USA auch die furchtbare Praxis des Lynchens Farbiger verbreitet. In seinem Buch „Der westliche Marxismus“ gibt Losurdo eine vom jungen Ho Chi Minh, dem späteren Befreier Vietnams, beobachtete grausame Szene wieder: „Als er 1924 auf der Suche nach Arbeit in die Vereinigten Staaten kommt, wird er voller Entsetzen Zeuge eines Lynchmordes, der langsamen und endlosen Qualen eines Schwarzen, denen eine amüsierte und feiernde Menge von Weißen beiwohnt. Wir übergehen die einzelnen Grausamkeiten, um uns auf die politische Zusammenfassung zu konzentrieren: ’Auf dem Boden, umgeben von Dreck aus Fett und Rauch, schneidet ein schwarzer Kopf, verstümmelt, geröstet, deformiert, eine schreckliche Grimasse und scheint die untergehende Sonne zu fragen: Und das ist Zivilisation?’“ [13] „Zwischen 1880 und 1900 wurden 2060 Afroamerikaner gelyncht. Einem Drittel von ihnen warf man sexuelle Übergriffe oder einfach unangemessenes Verhalten gegenüber weißen Frauen vor.“ [14]

Trotz aller Erfolge der Bürgerrechtsbewegung sind die USA auch heute noch – mehr als 150 Jahre nach Aufhebung der formellen Sklaverei – von einer Überwindung des Rassismus weit entfernt: Vor allem Farbige leiden unter bitterer Armut, sind häufiger als Weiße Opfer von Polizeigewalt, und ihr Anteil an Häftlingen ist weit überproportional.

Wie tief die rassische Diskriminierung in der weißen Gesellschaft der USA bis heute verankert ist, zeigt die alltägliche rassistische Gewalt von Polizisten gegenüber Schwarzen. Nach der Tötung von Trayvon Martin kam es 2013 zum Aufruhr von Empörten gegen diese Gewalt und zur Gründung der Bewegung „Black Lives Matters“. Auf die Ermordung des Schwarzen George Floyd im Mai 2020 durch weiße Polizisten in Minneapolis folgten erneut die ganzen USA erfassende Proteste. Auch in Europa kam es in vielen Städten zu Solidaritätsbekundungen.

Das Urteil des italienischen Historikers und Philosophen Domenico Losurdo über den Charakter der drei Länder Niederlande, Britannien und USA ist eindeutig: „Fest steht, dass in allen drei liberalen Revolutionen Freiheitsanspruch und Rechtfertigung der Sklaverei sowie der Dezimierung (oder Vernichtung) der Barbaren Hand in Hand gehen. (…) Die Länder der drei großen liberalen Revolutionen sind also zugleich die Protagonisten zweier tragischer Kapitel der modernen und Zeitgeschichte.“ [15] In seinem 1998 geschriebenen Buch „Das 20. Jahrhundert begreifen“ kommt er zum ernüchternden Ergebnis: „Die Geschichte des Westens führt uns ein Paradoxon vor Augen, das von der Geschichte seines heutigen Führungslandes her begriffen werden kann: Die Demokratie innerhalb der weißen Gemeinschaft hat sich gleichzeitig mit der Versklavung der Schwarzen und der Deportation der Indianer entwickelt.“ [16]

Die fest etablierte Existenz der Sklaverei im klassischen Liberalismus ist für Losurdo daher der Schlüssel für das Verständnis des Westens gestern und heute. Die von Marx so treffend als „Handelsjagd auf Schwarzhäute“ beschriebenen, nicht enden wollenden Strafexpeditionen und Kolonialkriege mit unzähligen Toten und Entrechteten hatte die rassische Diskriminierung ganzer Völker zur Voraussetzung bzw. zur Folge. Ein Gift, das noch heute wirkt und zur gegenwärtigen Teilung der Welt in einen weißen Westen und einen farbigen globalen Süden entscheidend beiträgt.

Französische Revolution und die Erschütterung der Institution Sklaverei

Ein anderes Bild zeigt, zumindest was die Akzeptanz der Sklaverei angeht, die Französische Revolution. Sie ist zwar gleichfalls eine bürgerliche Revolution, die eine liberale Gesellschaft hervorbringt, trägt aber zugleich Elemente in sich, die darüber hinausgehen. Die Erklärung der Menschen- und Bürgerrechte der Französischen Nationalversammlung vom 26. August 1789 bezieht sich ausdrücklich auf alle Menschen ungeachtet ihrer Hautfarbe und nimmt die Sklaverei nicht hin, wie in der US-amerikanischen Verfassung geschehen. Dort wird die Institution der Sklaverei „in dem Staat rechtlich und sogar verfassungsmäßig legitimiert, der aus dem Aufstand der Siedler hervorgegangen ist, die sich nicht als ’Neger’ behandeln lassen wollten – wenn auch unter Anwendung der Euphemismen und Umschreibungen (…). Es entsteht damit ein Land, das durch die (Losurdo zitiert hier Robin Blackburn) ’feste und direkte Verbindung von Eigentum an Sklaven und politischer Macht’ gekennzeichnet ist, wie sowohl die Verfassung als auch die Zahl der Sklavenhalter verdeutlicht, die zum höchsten Staatsamt aufsteigen.“ [17]

Die französischen Revolutionäre ließen sich demgegenüber in ihrem Handeln von Persönlichkeiten leiten, die bereits weit vor den revolutionären Ereignissen die Sklaverei ablehnten, sie zumindest aber grundsätzlich in Frage stellten: „Die Kritik an der Sklaverei entwickelte sich im 18. Jahrhundert stärker in Frankreich und wird schließlich wesentlicher Bestandteil der ideologischen Vorbereitung der französischen Revolution, wobei allerdings Dissonanzen und Zweideutigkeiten nicht fehlen.“ [18] Losurdo hebt dabei die Rollen der Aufklärer Montesquieu vor allem aber die von Rousseau hervor: „Tatsache ist jedenfalls, dass die gegen die Sklaverei gerichtete Polemik der philosophes nicht nur wesentlicher Bestandteil der ideologischen Vorbereitung der französischen Revolution ist, sondern auch eine Rolle bei dem Aufstand der Negersklaven gespielt hat, der auf der Woge dieser Revolution in Saint Domingue ausgebrochen war. Toussaint Louverture, der Anführer dieses Aufstandes bewunderte zutiefst die französische aufklärerische Kultur und hatte Raynalds Historie gelesen, wo er mit aller Wahrscheinlichkeit auch auf dessen Voraussicht eines neuen Spartakus gestoßen ist. (…) Der neue Spartakus scheint sich jedenfalls in Toussaint Louverture zu verkörpern. Im Gefolge des von ihm angeführten Aufstands schafft der Konvent 1794 die Sklaverei in den Kolonien ab, die dann 1802 von Napoleon wieder eingeführt wird.“ [19] Toussaint Louverture, der große Vorkämpfer der Revolution von San Domingo, fordert, (hier zitiert Losurdo Florence Gauthier, Triomphe et mort du droit naturel en Révolution) ’die absolute Geltung des Grundsatzes, dass kein Mensch, sei er rot, schwarz oder weiß, Eigentum von seinesgleichen sein kann’“ [20] Ohne Zweifel ist Louverture für Domenico Losurdo ein hervorragender Freiheitskämpfer, der Jahrzehnte vor Marx und Engels und ein Jahrhundert vor Lenin in Wort und Tat für Emanzipation und Gleichberechtigung kämpfte und dennoch bis heute kaum bekannt ist, obwohl „der große Protagonist der Revolution der Sklaven“ [21] in die Reihe der großen Revolutionäre gehört.

Die Erschütterung, die die Institution der Sklaverei weltweit durch die Französische Revolution erfährt, ist auch in Deutschland zu spüren: „Im Jahre 1795 verurteilt Kant energisch die ’allergrausamste und ausgedachteste Sklaverei’, die auf den ’Zuckerinseln’ stattfindet; wichtig ist hier, dass Kant seine Verurteilung unter besonderer Bezugnahme auf die ’handeltreibenden Staaten unseres Weltteils’ und auf die Länder ausspricht, ’die von der Frömmigkeit viel Werks machen’ (…). Die Verurteilung konzentriert sich also auf England und auf die Staaten, die sich geweigert hatten, dem Beispiel des Konvents hinsichtlich der Abschaffung der Sklaverei in den Kolonien zu folgen, und die gegen das revolutionäre (und gegen die Sklaverei gerichtete) Frankreich einen Kreuzzug auch im Namen der Revolution führten.“ [22]

Somit haben „sowohl die Niederländische als auch die Englische sowie die Amerikanische Revolution (…) der Entwicklung der Freiheit, der politischen Gleichheit und der Demokratie entscheidende Impulse gegeben. Doch das alles galt nur für die Weißen, für die Bevölkerungen der westlichen, kolonisierenden Länder und auch lange Zeit nur für die wenigen Besitzenden dort. In den Kolonien erkämpften sich europäische Einwanderer Freiheitsrechte und verlangten nach staatlicher Unabhängigkeit. Doch ohne „die Sklaverei (und die darauffolgende Rassentrennung) kann man die ’amerikanische Freiheit’ nicht verstehen: sie wachsen, sich gegenseitig stützend, gemeinsam heran. (…)

Die Herrenvolk democracy der USA

Es ist Hannah Arendt, die 1967 – inzwischen US-Bürgerin – eine Beurteilung der beiden Revolutionen, der Amerikanischen sowie der Französischen, vornimmt: „Die Französische Revolution mündete in eine Katastrophe und wurde zu einem Wendepunkt der Weltgeschichte; die Amerikanische Revolution war ein triumphaler Erfolg und blieb eine lokale Angelegenheit (…).“ [23] Doch kommt auch sie nicht umhin einzugestehen, dass dieser „triumphale Erfolg“ nur für Weiße galt, für Schwarze und Indianer verhieß die Amerikanische Revolution hingegen nichts Gutes: Die Revolution verdankte – nach Arendt - „ihren Erfolg zu einem Gutteil dem Fehlen verzweifelter Armut unter den Freien und der Unsichtbarkeit der Sklaven in den Kolonien der Neuen Welt. Natürlich gab es Armut und Elend in Amerika, die durchaus mit der Lage der ’laboring poor’ in Europa vergleichbar waren. Mochte Amerika in der Tat ’a good poor Man´s country’ sein, wie William Penn meinte, ein gutes Land für arme Männer, und bis zum Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts für die Verarmten Europas der Traum vom gelobten Land bleiben, so ist nicht weniger wahr, dass diese ’Gutheit’ zu einem beträchtlichen Maß vom Elend der Schwarzen abhing. (…) Der Unterschied bestand somit darin, dass die Amerikanische Revolution aufgrund der Institution der Sklaverei und wegen der Überzeugung, Sklaven würden einer anderen ’Rasse’ angehören, die Existenz der Elenden übersah und damit die beachtliche Aufgabe aus dem Blick verlor, diejenigen zu befreien, die weniger durch politische Unterdrückung als durch die einfachsten Grundbedürfnisse des Lebens gefesselt waren. Les malheureux, die Unglücklichen, die im Verlauf der Französischen Revolution eine so gewichtige Rolle spielen und von ihr le peuple gleichgesetzt wurden, existieren in Amerika entweder nicht oder blieben völlig im Verborgenen.“ [24]

Ganz ähnlich, in seiner Wortwahl nur deutlich schärfer, beschreibt Losurdo den Liberalismus der USA: „Wir haben es (hier) mit einem Rassenstaat zu tun, der sich, der ausdrücklichen Erklärung seiner Theoretiker und Apologeten im Süden zufolge, in ’drei Kasten, die freien Weißen, die freien Farbigen, die farbigen Sklaven’ gliedert“ [25] Und somit spielt die Rassendiskriminierung „in den Vereinigten Staaten eine entscheidende Rolle im nationalen Maßstab (…), so empfiehlt es sich von einer Herrenvolk democracy zu sprechen.“ Heutige amerikanische Historiker verwenden dabei bewusst die deutsche Formulierung Herrenvolk, um die enge Verwandtschaft zwischen dem US-amerikanischen Rassismus und der rassistischen Ideologie des deutschen NS-Staats zu betonen. [26]

Und diese Herrenvolk democracy verschwindet auch nicht mit dem Ende der Sklaverei, nach dem Sieg der Union über den abtrünnigen Süden im amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg: „Die formelle Abschaffung der Sklaverei in den Vereinigten Staaten im Jahre 1865, dreißig Jahre nach der entsprechenden Maßnahme in den englischen Kolonien und mit einer noch größeren Verspätung im Vergleich zu den Ländern, die die Unabhängigkeit von Spanien erobert hatten, setzt diesem Rassenstaat keineswegs ein Ende.

Wir sehen ein Regime der white supremacy am Werk, dass die Rassentrennung in den Schulen, in den öffentlichen Verkehrsmitteln, in den Aufzügen und auf dem Friedhof und in jedem Aspekt des sozialen Lebens sanktioniert und die sexuellen Beziehungen und Eheverbindungen zwischen den Rassen verbietet und wie ein Verbrechen behandelt.“ [27] In Florida „werden sogar verschiedene Galgen für Schwarze und Weiße Todeskandidaten verwendet.“ [28]

Diese Zweiteilung wird als Segregation bezeichnet. Es ist „ein Begriff, den die Gesetzgeber in den Südstaaten selbst verwenden, bevor er Eingang in die Geschichtswissenschaft fand. (…) Im Verlauf der beiden ersten Jahrzehnte des 20. Jahrhunderts veränderte sich das Erscheinungsbild der Städte im Süden der USA durch die Errichtung von Mauern und Trennwänden, Schilder mit den Aufschriften ’Whites only’ und ’Colored only’ wurden aufgehängt, etwa an Trinkbrunnen oder Wartesälen. In öffentlichen Gebäuden und privaten Geschäften gab es doppelte Eingangstüren.“ [29]

Herrenvolk democracy als westliches Phänomen

Nach Domenico Losurdo kann „Die Kategorie Herrenvolk democracy zur Erklärung der gesamten Geschichte des Westens herangezogen werden. Zwischen dem Ende des 19. und dem Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts geht in Europa die Ausweitung des Wahlrechts Hand in Hand mit dem Kolonisationsprozess, der für die unterworfenen Völker den Zwang zu sklavischer oder halbsklavischer Arbeit mit sich brachte. Die Rechtsstaatlichkeit in der kapitalistischen Metropole ist eng verknüpft mit der Gewalt, der bürokratischen und Polizeiwillkür und mit dem Belagerungszustand in den Kolonien. Letztendlich ist es das gleiche Phänomen, das in den Vereinigten Staaten auftritt, nur erscheint es im Fall Europas nicht so offensichtlich, weil die Kolonialbevölkerungen nicht in der kapitalistischen Metropole leben, sondern von ihr durch den Ozean getrennt sind.“ [30]

Das südafrikanische Apartheitssystem kopiert dieses System der Rassentrennung. In Nazideutschland wird es auf die Diskriminierung der Juden angewandt: So werden Parkbänke als „Nur für Arier“ benutzbar erklärt. Die wenigen für Juden vorgesehenen werden gelb angestrichen. In verschiedenen Landesteilen wird selbst der Wald zum „deutschen Wald“ erklärt, zu dem Juden keinen Zutritt haben. [31]

Losurdo ist aber davon weit entfernt, die USA des ewigen Rassismus zu beschuldigen und es etwa gegenüber europäischen Kolonialländern wie Belgien, Dänemark, Deutschland, Großbritannien, Frankreich, die Niederlande, Portugal und Spanien zurückzusetzen: „Das jahrhundertlange Andauern des Rassenstaats in den Vereinigten Staaten kann nicht mit einem mythischen, ewigen und einförmigen Amerika erklärt werden, sondern damit, dass sich in diesem Land die Kolonialvölker auf dem gleichen Territorium befinden, auf dem die herrschende Rasse lebte, und diese sah sich daher zu Maßnahmen gezwungen, die in Europa überflüssig waren. Dort kam die herrschende weiße Rasse wegen der räumlichen Distanz, die sie von den ’niederen’ Rassen trennt, die jenseits der Meere angesiedelt sind, leichter ihre Reinheit bewahren.“ [32]

Seit einiger Zeit sehen sich allerdings auch die alten europäischen Kolonialländern mit einer starken Zuwanderung vor allem aus ihren früheren Kolonien konfrontiert, die sie womöglich bald vor ähnliche Herausforderungen stellen werden wie sie in den USA schon lange existieren.

[1] Ich beziehe mich bei den folgenden Ausführungen vor allem auf Arbeiten des italienischen Historikers und Philosophen Domenico Losurdo. Im Mittelpunkt seines Werks stand die Kritik am Liberalismus und hier vor allem die Entstehung und Geschichte der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika. Die USA sind bis heute der Hort des Liberalismus und das mit Abstand wichtigste Land des liberalen Westens. Zitiert wird hier vor allem aus Losurdos Bücher „Freiheit als Privileg. Eine Gegengeschichte des Liberalismus“ und „Demokratie oder Bonapartismus – Triumpf und Niedergang des allgemeinen Wahlrechts“.

[2] Domenico Losurdo, Freiheit als Privileg. Eine Gegengeschichte des Liberalismus, Köln 2010, S. 33

[3] Domenico Losurdo, Freiheit als Privileg, a.a.O., S. 140

[4] Domenico Losurdo, Freiheit als Privileg, a.a.O., S. 23

[5] Domenico Losurdo, Freiheit als Privileg, a.a.O., S. 317

[6] Domenico Losurdo, Freiheit als Privileg, a.a.O., S. 196

[7] Domenico Losurdo, Freiheit als Privileg, a.a.O., S. 50

[8] Domenico Losurdo, Gewaltlosigkeit. Eine Gegengeschichte, Hamburg 2015, S. 244

[9] Domenico Losurdo, Freiheit als Privileg, a.a.O., S. 90

[10] Domenico Losurdo, Freiheit als Privileg, a.a.O., S. 436

[11] Domenico Losurdo, Lenin, die Herrenvolk democracy und das Schwarzbuch des Kommunismus, in: Topos – Internationale Beiträge zur dialektischen Theorie, Heft 22, 2003, Napoli, S. 49

[12] Domenico Losurdo, Fortschritt, Emanzipation und „Ernst des Negativen“. Zur Rehabilitierung einer heute verrufenen Idee, in: Das Argument 230, 41. Jahrgang Heft 2/3, 1999, S. 242

[13] Domenico Losurdo, Der westliche Marxismus. Wie er entstand, verschied und auferstehen könnte, Köln, 2021, S. 51

[14] Loïc Wacquant, Ein teuflisch penibles System, in: LE MONDE diplomatique, März 2024, Berlin, S.13

[15] Domenico Losurdo, Freiheit als Privileg, a.a.O., S. 41

[16] Domenico Losurdo, Da 20. Jahrhundert begreifen, Köln 2013, S. 21

[17] Domenico Losurdo, Freiheit als Privileg, a.a.O., S. 73

[18] Domenico Losurdo, Lemma Sklaverei, a.a.O., S. 302

[19] Domenico Losurdo, Lemma Sklaverei, a.a.O., S. 305

[20] Domenico Losurdo, Freiheit als Privileg, a.a.O., S. 236

[21] Domenico Losurdo, Freiheit als Privileg, a.a.O., S. 262

[22] Domenico Losurdo, Lemma Sklaverei, in: Europäischen Enzyklopädie zu Philosophie und Sozialwissenschaften, Hrsg. Hans Jörg Sandkühler, Hamburg 1990, Band 4 R-Z, S. 305

[23] Hannah Arendt, Die Freiheit, frei zu sein, 14. Auflage 2023, München, S. 32

[24] Hannah Arendt, Die Freiheit, frei zu sein, a. a. O., S. 24 f.

[25] Domenico Losurdo, Freiheit als Privileg, a.a.O., S. 136

[26] Domenico Losurdo, Freiheit als Privileg, a.a.O., S. 141

[27] Domenico Losurdo, Die Deutschen. Sonderweg eines unverbesserlichen Volkes? Berlin 2010, S. 33

[28] Loïc Wacquant, Ein teuflisch penibles System, in: LE MONDE diplomatique, a.a.O., S.13

[29] Ebenda

[30] Domenico Losurdo, Lenin, die Herrenvolk democracy und das Schwarzbuch des Kommunismus, a.a.O. S. 50

[31] In seinen Tagebüchern zählt Victor Klemperer unzählige Beispiele solcher Diskriminierungen auf, die den Juden in Nazideutschland das Leben schwermachten, bevor man schließlich zu ihrer Ermordung überging.

[32] Domenico Losurdo, Die Deutschen. Sonderweg eines unverbesserlichen Volkes? Berlin 2010, S. 36 f.

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La Nouvelle-Zélande ordonne l’extradition du fondateur de Megaupload, Kim Dotcom, vers les Etats-Unis
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2024/08/15/kim-dotcom-la-nouvelle-zelande-ordonne-l-extradition-du-fondateur-de-megaupl

Nouvelle étape dans le parcours judiciaire mouvementé du sulfureux Kim Dotcom. Jeudi 15 août, le ministre de la justice néo-zélandais, Paul Goldsmith, a annoncé dans un communiqué transmis à l’agence Reuters avoir signé un ordre d’extradition du fondateur de Megaupload. « J’ai examiné toutes les informations avec attention, et j’ai décidé que M. Dotcom devait être remis aux Etats-Unis pour être jugé », a-t-il déclaré, en ajoutant qu’il lui laissait « une courte période » pour prendre conseil auprès de ses avocats.

Le cinéma et la prison
▻https://www.dctvny.org/s

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Firehouse: DCTV’s Cinema for Documentary Film Opens in NY After 50 Years of Media Activism
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSFSOw0Cfyk

John Alpert
▻https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Alpert

Demolition Progresses for 45-Story Manhattan Detention Complex at 124-125 White Street in Chinatown, Manhattan
▻https://newyorkyimby.com/2023/08/demolition-progresses-for-45-story-manhattan-detention-complex-at-124-

https://i.postimg.cc/pL1B1kBn/20240816-osm-new-york-manhattan-dctv-detention-complex.png

Why the World’s Tallest Jail in New York City Is So Controversial
▻https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/why-worlds-tallest-jail-new-york-city-so-controversial

#USA #New_York #prison #vidéo #médias

Columbia whistleblower on exposing college rankings: ‘They are worthless’

US News relegated Columbia to 18th from second place after it was revealed the college had misrepresented key statistics.
The Columbia University academic whose exposure of false data caused the prestigious institution to plunge in US college rankings has accused its administration of deception and a whitewash over the affair.

Michael Thaddeus, a mathematics professor, said that by submitting rigged numbers to drive the university up the influential US News & World Report rankings, Columbia put its financial priorities ahead of students education in order to fund a ballooning and secretive bureaucracy.

On Monday, US News relegated Columbia from second to 18th in the latest rankings after the college admitted to “outdated and/or incorrect methodologies” in some of its previous claims about the quality of the education the university provides.

“I find it very difficult to believe the errors were honest and inadvertent at this point,” Thaddeus told the Guardian.

He added: “The response that the university made was not the forthright, direct, complete response of a university that really wanted to clear the air and really wanted to inform the public. They address certain issues but then they completely ignored or whitewashed other ones.”

Thaddeus embarrassed Columbia and shocked the academic world in February when he published a lengthy analysis accusing the university of submitting “inaccurate, dubious or highly misleading” statistics for the US News rankings. Among other things, he took issue with claims about class sizes, which the mathematics professor said he knew from experience were not accurate, and the assertion that all of the university’s faculty held the highest degrees in their fields.

Thaddeus also said the university hugely overstated spending on instruction, claiming it far exceeded other Ivy League universities, by adding in the cost of patient care in the medical school.

Columbia initially defended its numbers before admitting on Friday that Thaddeus was right about class sizes and the qualifications of its teaching staff. “We deeply regret the deficiencies in our prior reporting and are committed to doing better,” Columbia’s provost, Mary Boyce, said in the statement.

In July, the university said it was pulling out of this year’s rankings. US News made its own calculations, based in part on federal data, and this week moved the university down a humiliating 16 places.

Thaddeus began digging into the numbers as Columbia celebrated its stunning rise in the rankings from 18th in 1988. It broke into the top five in 2011 and eventually made second place last year.

“A few other top-tier universities have also improved their standings, but none has matched Columbia’s extraordinary rise. It is natural to wonder what the reason might be,” he wrote in his analysis.

When Thaddeus began to suspect that Columbia’s numbers didn’t add up, he saw the opportunity to discredit a system he regards as a con perpetrated on prospective students desperate to ensure that the tens of thousands of dollars a year many will spend on gigantic tuition fees are worth it.

The US News rankings, alongside less influential ones by the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and other publications, have a significant impact on which universities prospective students favor. Thaddeus said Columbia’s fall exposes the shoddiness of a system that relies on an institution’s own numbers without checking.

“I’ve long believed that all university rankings are essentially worthless. They’re based on data that have very little to do with the academic merit of an institution and that the data might not be accurate in the first place,” he said.

“It was never my objective to knock Columbia down the rankings. A better outcome would be if the rankings themselves are knocked down and people just stop reading them, stop taking them as seriously as they have.”

It’s not the first scandal involving the US News rankings. Last year, a former dean of Temple University’s business school in Philadelphia was sent to prison for fraud after rigging data to move the college’s MBA sharply up the rankings.

But Thaddeus, who has taught at Columbia for 24 years, also had another target in his sights – his own university’s administration.

The former head of Columbia’s mathematics department described an expanding and self-replicating bureaucracy that is growing ever more expensive to maintain. He said that Columbia’s endowment is not large enough to cover the cost of the growing administration and so it is paid for by increasing tuition costs.

“It means that our educational programmes have to be run to some degree as money-making ventures. That is the secret that can’t be openly acknowledged,” he said.
Thaddeus suspects administrators rigged the data to move the university up the rankings in order to justify rising tuition fees which, at about $65,000 a year, are more than five times the amount paid by the parents of today’s students in the 1980s.

“It’s clear that the growth of university bureaucracies and administration has been a major driver of the cost of higher education growing much, much faster than inflation. We now have about 4,500 administrators on the main campus, about three times the number of faculty, and that’s a new development over the past 20 years,” he said.

“What is less clear is what all these administrators are actually doing. They say that more administrators are needed to comply with government regulations. There may be a little truth to that, but not much, because these regulations in question were enacted decades ago. There hasn’t been a lot of new university regulation that I know of.”

Thaddeus acknowledged that there was a need for more staff to provide services that were not previously available such as much more extensive career placement, counseling and psychiatric care. But he does not believe that accounts for the growth of a bureaucracy he describes as self-serving and unaccountable.

“I was kind of radicalised by the experience of being department chair in mathematics from 2017 to 2020. That’s when I saw how secretive, how autocratic, Columbia’s administration is. How they never share relevant information with faculty or students or the public. This episode has just seriously damaged the credibility of the administration. That saddens me, but it’s also important that these issues get out in the open,” he said.

Thaddeus said that initially he was not willing to accuse the university of deliberately manipulating the rankings system.

“When I first wrote my article, I expressed greater agnosticism on this point,” he said.
But he said the university’s response, including its failure to be transparent about how the false data came to be reported, caused him to believe Columbia deliberately gamed the system.

“Also, there’s been no move by the university to commission an external investigation, an investigation at arm’s length by a third party such as a law firm, which is standard practice when ranking scandals erupt. If I had seen some move like that by the university, I would be more inclined to think that the errors were honest and inadvertent,” he said.

Approached for comment, Columbia said it had nothing to add to the statements it has already made.

▻https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/16/columbia-whistleblower-us-news-rankings-michael-thaddeus

#ranking #bullshit #ESR #université #facs #ESR #classement #statistiques #classement #Columbia_University #USA #Etats-Unis

Università, una lenta parità

Nel 1996, all’#USI, i professori di ruolo di sesso maschile erano 35, a fronte di una sola presenza femminile. Una! Nel 2023, siamo invece a 108 uomini e 31 donne. Al di là dell’aumento di personale, possiamo dire che resta sì una forte disparità, ma anche che qualcosa si sta comunque muovendo. Nei nuovi dati pubblicati dall’Ufficio federale di statistica, la situazione nelle università svizzere e nei politecnici federali sembra in fase di aggiustamento. Va considerato che, nel 2023, in Svizzera, nelle alte scuole universitarie hanno lavorato 72.265 persone, pari a un totale di 48.565 posti di lavoro a tempo pieno. Per il resto, la tabella a lato è piuttosto chiara. Per analizzarla, abbiamo contattato la rettrice dell’Università della Svizzera italiana, Luisa Lambertini. Il primo dato che balza agli occhi, sottolineiamo, è che c’è ancora molto lavoro da fare. È così? «Certamente, c’è da fare. E siamo intenzionati a proseguire i nostri sforzi sia a livello svizzero, sia all’USI. Purtroppo, per quanto si siano fatti progressi, la tendenza positiva osservata nel corso degli ultimi dieci anni non ha ancora posto rimedio a una situazione che tutt’oggi resta chiaramente sbilanciata. Di qui la necessità di proseguire con questo processo con misure concrete».
«Un certo tipo di mentalità»

Gli ambiti di intervento sono molteplici. A partire da quella che Luisa Lambertini definisce come «esigenza di rimodellare un certo tipo di mentalità». Una mentalità «che ha perdurato per decenni». E allora va rimodellata «al fine di favorire la parità e - di riflesso - maggiore equilibrio nella ripartizione delle cattedre. Un processo che però necessita di essere accompagnato da misure più incisive per accelerarne gli effetti. Per quanto concerne l’USI, nell’ultimo anno, da quando sono rettrice, su un totale di quattro nomine tre sono state di professoresse». Un inizio che la stessa rettrice definisce «molto promettente». E per raggiungere questi numeri, «seguendo le migliori pratiche adottate anche in altri atenei, abbiamo deciso che almeno due donne facciano parte delle commissioni di preavviso. Inoltre abbiamo deciso che il 50% delle posizioni nella short list delle commissioni di preavviso debba essere composto da candidate di genere femminile. Il rettorato si è inoltre impegnato a valutare queste liste e a prendere decisioni appropriate se non compatibili con gli obiettivi di genere dell’Università. Per attrarre personale accademico di genere femminile, le migliori pratiche suggeriscono anche di individuare potenziali candidate prima dell’avvio delle commissioni di preavviso. Questo significa sviluppare e coltivare una rete di contatti popolata da postdoc, studentesse di dottorato e professoresse assistenti, attraverso inviti per le candidate per visite di breve periodo, sabbatici o seminari. L’USI vuole anche diventare un’università dove colleghe e colleghi lavorano volentieri e possono conciliare vita familiare e carriera: nel prossimo quadriennio quindi ci siamo impegnati a rafforzare l’offerta di servizi volti a renderla un posto di lavoro accogliente».
«L’USI era penultima»

Tra i dati proposti dall’UST, scorgiamo due note incoraggianti. La prima: la crescita del numero di donne rispetto al 2014. Una crescita «sicuramente dovuta alle misure di settore, che hanno già portato effetti benefici nell’ottica della parità di genere. E poi alla volontà dei singoli individui di invertire una tendenza che ha perdurato troppo a lungo. D’altronde soltanto attraverso azioni concrete, nonché significative, è possibile tagliare determinati traguardi. E il fatto di avere sempre più rettrici donne ai vertici delle università svizzere aiuta».

La seconda nota incoraggiante: il fatto che più si abbassa l’età, più si intravede un’idea di reale parità. Già, ma ci viene un dubbio: questa idea è rispettata anche a livello di salari e di ruoli? Risponde sempre Luisa Lambertini: «Sì, i dati mostrano che più si abbassa l’età, più ci si avvicina alla parità. Alcuni processi aiutano: normalmente le università sostituiscono i professori ordinari a fine carriera con una combinazione di professoresse/professori assistenti e/o associate/i sufficientemente lontani dall’età pensionabile. Questo ricambio, caratterizzato appunto da un ringiovanimento, offre altresì la possibilità - a chi è intenzionato a coglierla - di intervenire sul disequilibrio di genere e salariale. È sicuramente il caso dell’USI, che tra le università e i politecnici svizzeri risultava penultima in termini di percentuale di posizioni professorali occupate da donne». In questo senso, per monitorare le eventuali altre disparità, tra cui quelle salariali, all’USI è stato introdotto dallo scorso anno lo strumento del “Bilancio di genere”, che misura la parità nelle sue diverse manifestazioni per capire dove è urgente intervenire e per monitorare i progressi fatti. «L’USI è stata una delle prime università in Svizzera e una delle poche istituzioni in Ticino a introdurre questo strumento». E la rettrice ammette: «Alcuni divari di genere, difficilmente comprensibili alla luce dei dati disponibili, sono effettivamente emersi, mentre in altri settori dell’USI essi si attenuano, o si annullano. Si è proceduto quindi a fare a ulteriori verifiche e si è ritenuto auspicabile completare il processo di istituzionalizzazione della parità di genere, ampliare la gamma dei parametri di misurazione, così da poter approfondire e comprendere le molte sfaccettature del problema».

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▻https://www.cdt.ch/news/universita-una-lenta-parita-360173
#università_della_svizzera_italiana (#USI) #parité #genre #femems #ESR #Suisse #rapport #recherche #université #facs #inégalités

Gena Rowlands ist tot: Bekannt aus „Eine Frau unter Einfluss“ und „Gloria“
▻https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/news/gena-rowlands-tot-schauspielerin-mit-94-jahren-gestorben-li.2244923

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15.8.2024 - Gena Rowlands drehte Dutzende Filme, viele davon unter der Regie ihres Mannes John Cassavetes. Nun ist der Star gestorben.

Die amerikanische Schauspielerin Gena Rowlands ist tot. Sie starb am Mittwoch im Alter von 94 Jahren, wie das Onlineportal TMZ und die New York Times berichteten. Eine offizielle Todesursache wurde zunächst nicht genannt. Im Juni hatte ihr Sohn Nick Cassavetes der New York Times gesagt, dass Rowlands seit fünf Jahren an Alzheimer leide.

Rowlands wirkte seit den 1960er Jahren in Dutzenden Filmen mit, viele davon unter der Regie ihres Mannes John Cassavetes. Mit dem Regisseur war sie von 1954 bis zu dessen Tod im Jahr 1989 verheiratet. Das Paar hatte drei Kinder, die ihnen ins Filmgeschäft folgten.

Für ihre Rollen in den Erfolgsfilmen „Eine Frau unter Einfluss“ (1974) und „Gloria“ (1980), beide unter der Regie von John Cassavetes, wurde sie für einen Oscar nominiert, ging aber jeweils leer aus. 2015 zollte die Filmakademie der damals 85-jährigen Schauspielerin mit einem Ehren-Oscar Anerkennung für ihr Lebenswerk.

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#cinéma #acteurs #USA

California’s forest carbon offsets buffer pool is severely undercapitalized

California operates a large forest carbon offsets program that credits carbon stored in forests across the continental United States and parts of coastal Alaska. These credits can be sold to buyers who wish to justify ongoing emissions, including in California’s cap-and-trade program. Although fossil CO2 emissions have effectively permanent atmospheric consequences, carbon stored in forests is inherently less durable because forests are subject to significant socioeconomic and physical risks that can cause temporarily stored carbon to be re-released into the atmosphere. To address these risks, California’s program is nominally designed to provide a 100-year guarantee on forest carbon claims based on a self-insurance program known as a buffer pool. Projects contribute credits to the buffer pool based on a suite of project-specific risk factors, with buffer pool credits retired as needed to cover carbon losses from events such as wildfire or drought. So long as the buffer pool remains solvent, the program’s permanence claim remains intact. Here, we perform an actuarial analysis of the performance of California’s buffer pool. We document how wildfires have depleted nearly one-fifth of the total buffer pool in less than a decade, equivalent to at least 95 percent of the program-wide contribution intended to manage all fire risks for 100 years. We also show that potential carbon losses from a single forest disease, sudden oak death, could fully encumber all credits set aside for disease and insect risks. These findings indicate that California’s buffer pool is severely undercapitalized and therefore unlikely to be able to guarantee the environmental integrity of California’s forest offsets program for 100 years.

▻https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/forests-and-global-change/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2022.930426/full

#forêt #Californie #feu_de_forêt #incendie #crédits_carbone #buffer_pool #zone_tampon #USA #Etats-Unis