The Timely and Powerful Rise of New Democratic Party Progressives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar in the Fight For A Sane and Humane Immigration Reform Policy

https://truthout.org/…/ocasio-cortez-pressley-tlaib-and-om…/

News
Politics & Elections

Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, Tlaib and Omar Call for Cuts to ICE Funding
by Jake Johnson
February 1, 2019
Common Dreams

PHOTO: From left, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib attend a House Oversight and Reform Committee business meeting in the Rayburn Building on Tuesday, January 29, 2019. Tom Williams / CQ Roll Call


As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) signaled on Thursday that Democrats are willing to offer President Donald Trump funding for border “technology” and “Normandy fencing” — but nothing for his wall — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and three of her progressive colleagues sent a letter urging Democratic negotiators to take a harder line by slashing funding for the agencies at the center of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.
Condemning the Trump administration for putting “profits before people and rhetoric before the lives of immigrant children,” Ocasio-Cortez joined Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in demanding that Democrats cut funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

“These agencies have promulgated an agenda driven by hate — not strategy,” reads the letter, which was first published on Thursday by The Daily Beast. “With the world watching and the lives of families at stake, we should not compromise our values at the negotiating table.”

The letter from House progressives, which is expected to be read on the House floor next week, went public as Trump told reporters on Thursday that he “won’t waste [his] time reading” any funding agreement that doesn’t include wall money — an indication that he may be willing to shut down the government again when the current stopgap spending measure expires Feb. 15.

The president also suggested that he is still considering a national emergency declaration to build the wall without congressional funding.

But even as he repeatedly demanded wall money from Congress, Trump also bizarrely stated, “We have money, just so you understand. We have money, we’re building the wall right now. A lot of it. People don’t know that, and nobody reports it, but that’s ok.”

Trump is hopelessly incoherent: “We’re building the wall right now. It’s going up fairly rapidly,” he says (falsely), while at the same time urging Congress to give him money to build the wall. pic.twitter.com/venmu1WJoT

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 31, 2019

Bipartisan conference committee negotiations on a spending plan that would keep the government open beyond Feb. 15 kicked off this week, but no concrete proposals have yet emerged from the talks.

According to The Daily Beast, “Democratic lawmakers on the conference committee indicated that plenty of options were on the table in talks with Republican counterparts. But decreasing funding for DHS was not one of them. The Democrats’ opening bid offers a $589 million increase in the agency’s budget from the year before.”

With Trump standing firm in his demand for wall money and Democrats continuing to offer fencing and technology that rights groups have denounced as ineffective, immoral, and unconstitutional, progressives celebrated Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, and Omar for taking a “principled position” beyond merely rejecting the president’s outlandish proposal.

“This is exactly the type of leadership we need in Congress,” said Gregory Cendana of United We Dream.

United We Dream

✔
@UNITEDWEDREAM

No more money for Trump’s mass deportation force!@AyannaPressley, @AOC, @Ilhan & @RashidaTlaib are calling on Congress to cut funding for ICE, CBP, and Trump’s border wall. ✊🏾

☎️ CALL Congress and demand they #DefundHate: 210-702-3059https://www.thedailybeast.com/progressive-democrats-to-shutdown-negotiators-not-another-dollar-in-dhs-funding …
32
11:52 AM - Jan 31, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy
Progressive Democrats to Shutdown Negotiators: ‘Not Another Dollar’ In DHS Funding

In a letter sent to their colleagues, the freshmen lawmakers severely move the Overton Window of the border wall debate.

thedailybeast.com

RAICES ✔
@RAICESTEXAS

Thank you @AOC, @IlhanMN, @AyannaPressley and @RashidaTlaib for pushing the Democratic party on the right direction on this issue. DHS does not need more money and Trump can't continue to get away with his fear mongering tactics. 

#DecriminalizeMigration https://www.thedailybeast.com/progressive-democrats-to-shut… …

191
10:31 AM - Jan 31, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy
Progressive Democrats to Shutdown Negotiators: ‘Not Another Dollar’ In DHS Funding

In a letter sent to their colleagues, the freshmen lawmakers severely move the Overton Window of the border wall debate.

thedailybeast.com

As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) signaled on Thursday that Democrats are willing to offer President Donald Trump funding for border “technology” and “Normandy fencing” — but nothing for his wall — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and three of her progressive colleagues sent a letter urging Democratic negotiators to take a harder line by slashing funding for the agencies at the center of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.

Condemning the Trump administration for putting “profits before people and rhetoric before the lives of immigrant children,” Ocasio-Cortez joined Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in demanding that Democrats cut funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

“These agencies have promulgated an agenda driven by hate — not strategy,” reads the letter, which was first published on Thursday by The Daily Beast. “With the world watching and the lives of families at stake, we should not compromise our values at the negotiating table.”

The letter from House progressives, which is expected to be read on the House floor next week, went public as Trump told reporters on Thursday that he “won’t waste [his] time reading” any funding agreement that doesn’t include wall money — an indication that he may be willing to shut down the government again when the current stopgap spending measure expires Feb. 15.

The president also suggested that he is still considering a national emergency declaration to build the wall without congressional funding.

But even as he repeatedly demanded wall money from Congress, Trump also bizarrely stated, “We have money, just so you understand. We have money, we’re building the wall right now. A lot of it. People don’t know that, and nobody reports it, but that’s ok.”

Trump is hopelessly incoherent: “We’re building the wall right now. It’s going up fairly rapidly,” he says (falsely), while at the same time urging Congress to give him money to build the wall. pic.twitter.com/venmu1WJoT

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 31, 2019

Bipartisan conference committee negotiations on a spending plan that would keep the government open beyond Feb. 15 kicked off this week, but no concrete proposals have yet emerged from the talks.

According to The Daily Beast, “Democratic lawmakers on the conference committee indicated that plenty of options were on the table in talks with Republican counterparts. But decreasing funding for DHS was not one of them. The Democrats’ opening bid offers a $589 million increase in the agency’s budget from the year before.”

With Trump standing firm in his demand for wall money and Democrats continuing to offer fencing and technology that rights groups have denounced as ineffective, immoral, and unconstitutional, progressives celebrated Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, and Omar for taking a “principled position” beyond merely rejecting the president’s outlandish proposal.

“This is exactly the type of leadership we need in Congress,” said Gregory Cendana of United We Dream.

Read the House progressives’ full letter:

Dear Colleagues,

We write to you today seeking your solidarity and support to enter in to the DHS conference committee process with clear eyes. The next 3 weeks we are tasked with operationalizing our values and addressing the fall out caused by a reckless administration that has put profits before people and rhetoric before the lives of immigrant children.

The Department of Homeland Security is tasked with critical functions. However, under the auspice of the Trump administration, a number of agencies housed at DHS have abused their authority and the fidelity of public resources. There is a documented pattern of agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Customs and Border Patrol overspending and abusing the transfer authority to quietly move funds around. Funds are being reallocated internally not to make our nation safer, but to build desert camps to inhumanely house infants and to prosecute immigrants who are part of the fabric of our community. These agencies have promulgated an agenda driven by hate — not strategy. We call on our colleagues at the negotiating table to adhere to the following guidelines critical to protecting families and children and restoring Americans’ faith in government:

Cut, do not increase funding. A Republican controlled Congress has already sharply increased DHS spending without clear justification. We have seen rampant spending on detention facilities for young children — reports indicate DHS is paying for-profit prison companies upwards of $700 a day to house children in inhumane facilities. The deal reached by Conference Committee should not allocate any additional funding to this department or to the ICE and CBP agencies. The upcoming FY2020 budget process will be a critical opportunity to take up conversations about reforms to the agency. In the meantime, not another dollar.

No transfer authority. The Trump administration continues to use DHS funding as a slush fund (through transfers or reprogramming) to increase detention programs and invest in ineffective policies. The conference committee should prohibit transfers and reprogramming authorities.

Stronger accountability. Strong report language is critical to ensuring safeguards to rein in DHS. However, report language is not enough. The final budget package must be accompanied by stringent oversight mechanisms, and critical obligations should be in statutory text not just report language. DHS has a failed track record of missing congressional deadlines, including when recently required to report on deaths in custody. For those reasons, the DHS should be taken up as a separate appropriations bill and accompanied by strong statutory language that saves lives and increases accountability.

As a nation, we need comprehensive immigration reform driven by justice and data. Let us be clear that that process will not play out during the Conference Committee’s narrow DHS deliberations. The sole focus of this Conference Committee is to put forward a short term spending package for 7 months. But a budget is a statement of our values. With the world watching and the lives of families at stake, we should not compromise our values at the negotiating table.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jake Johnson is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Follow him on Twitter: @johnsonjakep.

The Fight to Maintain the Political, Ideological, and Moral Integrity of the International BDS Movement and Its Support of the Human and Civil Rights of the Palestinian People vs. the Nefarious Legislative campaign by the GOP in Congress To Thwart and Defeat the Movement

https://truthout.org/…/republicans-are-using-shameless-tac…/

Op-Ed
Politics & Elections

Republicans Are Using Shameless Tactics to Split Democrats Over BDS
by Brant Rosen
January 31, 2019
Truthout

PHOTO: A provision added to the new Senate bill by Sen. Marco Rubio seeks to stifle support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

With the Senate’s imminent passage of the grandiosely titled Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act of 2019, it’s now official: Israel/Palestine will be a major political wedge issue in the 116th Congress and the 2020 election season. And it’s not going to be pretty.

This new Senate bill is essentially a package of previous bills that appears on the surface to be boilerplate Middle East legislation. But with the addition of a provision by Sen. Marco Rubio that seeks to stifle support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, this legislation is nothing short of a Republican line drawn in the sand.

BDS — the movement mobilized in response to a Palestinian civil society call for economic activism in support of Palestinian human rights — has long been a flash point for advocacy on the issue of Israel/Palestine. Over the past several years, there have been attempts on a state and federal level to fight BDS on a legislative level. While this new Senate bill does not criminalize BDS outright, it does encourage the passage of state laws that would require government contractors to certify they don’t participate in boycotts. More than two dozen states have passed such legislation in the past four years — laws that clearly violate the First Amendment right of free speech, as the ACLU and myriad other legal experts have pointed out.

In fact, the legality of these laws has already been successfully challenged in court. In Arizona, a US District judge issued an injunction blocking enforcement of its anti-BDS laws. Last December, a lawsuit was filed in federal court on behalf of a speech pathologist in Austin, Texas, after she was told that she could no longer work in the school district for refusing to sign an oath vowing that she “does not” and “will not” engage in a boycott of Israel.
Of course, the patently unconstitutional nature of these laws is immaterial to Senate lawmakers, who know full well that this legislation will have precious little impact on the “strength of America’s security in the Middle East.” Rather, the bill is a clear attempt by Republicans to divide Democrats over the politically fraught issue of Israel/Palestine, with BDS as the ultimate litmus test.

This Senate legislation is also a clear salvo at the new House of Representatives, which now includes the first US politicians to publicly support BDS: Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a Somali refugee; Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, a Palestinian-American; and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Not surprisingly, Omar and Tlaib, both Muslim, have already been cynically singled out by GOP politicians for accusations of anti-Semitism.

Republicans have made no secret of their intention to use divisions over BDS as fodder for their divide-and-conquer tactics. Norm Coleman, the national chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition and a former senator from Minnesota, openly stated to The New York Times, “I don’t see much hope for changing where Tlaib and Omar are, but there is a battle in the Democratic Party…. It is a message to Jews who still care about Israel, to say, ‘You’ll be much more comfortable in the Republican Party.’”

Republicans have made no secret of their intention to use divisions over BDS as fodder for their divide-and-conquer tactics.

After yesterday’s vote, however, it’s far from certain that the GOP’s strategy will succeed. It’s worth noting that every potential 2020 presidential candidate — Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders — voted against the bill. Moreover, during Tuesday’s Senate debate, Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland delivered a long and passionate denunciation of the bill. Liberal Zionist organizations, such as J Street and the rabbinical organization T’ruah, have issued statements condemning the legislation on free speech grounds. While these politicians and organizations still use clearly Zionist talking points and take pains to mention that they personally oppose BDS, their refusal to take the Republican bait is noteworthy.

In yet another sign of the increasing divide, a new group calling itself Democratic Majority for Israel has now incorporated in Washington, DC. According to its flashy new website, the group plans to “maintain and strengthen support for Israel among Democratic leaders including presidential and congressional candidates as well as with the grassroots of progressive movements.”

Suspiciously, however, while it proudly touts its “progressive policy agenda,” the new organization declines to identify any particular policy regarding Israel/Palestine. On the contrary, according to its “guiding principles,” Democratic Majority for Israel pointedly avoids any position beyond states “celebrating Israeli democracy and the right of the Israeli people to determine their own future without outside parties imposing solutions.” This new project claims it is separate and independent from AIPAC, the prominent and powerful pro-Israel lobbying group. However, a recent article in the Forward points out that of Democratic Majority for Israel’s “15 board members, 11 have either worked or volunteered for [AIPAC], donated to it or spoken at its events.” Moreover, the group’s president, Mark Mellman, has made it clear that Democratic Majority for Israel is actively trying to build a Democratic wing that will stand “unwaveringly” with Israel:

Most Democrats are strongly pro-Israel and we want to keep it that way. There are a few discordant voices, but we want to make sure that what’s a very small problem doesn’t metastasize into a bigger problem.

It’s not yet clear how many prominent Democrats will be attracted to this new project, but it has already gained the support of Rep. Hakeem Jefferies of New York, the fourth-ranking Democrat and a potential future Speaker of the House. In announcing his fealty to Democratic Majority for Israel, Jefferies praised the “special relationship between the United States and Israel” that is “rooted in shared values, an important strategic partnership in the Middle East, perhaps the world’s toughest neighborhood,” concluding, “I look forward to working with the Democratic Majority for Israel as it advances the unbreakable US-Israel bond into the future.”

It’s fair to view these new political maneuvers as the tactics of a once-formidable Israel advocacy machine that knows its power is on the wane.

How to respond to the new “divide-and-conquer” atmosphere currently sweeping the Democratic party? As ever, it will come down to money versus people power. In the end, it’s fair to view these new political maneuvers as the tactics of a once-formidable Israel advocacy machine that knows its power is on the wane. While it would certainly be foolhardy to underestimate the strength of the Israel lobby, there is a certain air of desperation surrounding these political efforts to stem the growth of the popular movement responding to the Palestinian civil society call for BDS.

It is clear that the growing movement of support for Palestinian human rights is increasingly popular with young people — including young Jews. Additionally, we now have members of Congress showing solidarity with Palestinians, and the first-ever congressional bill advocating for Palestinian human rights will soon be reintroduced. Bottom line: those who defend the oppressive policies of the state of Israel have every reason to be concerned.

It remains to be seen whether Republicans’ new political wedge tactics will succeed in weakening the Democratic Party. At the very least, they will force Democratic leaders to come clean on precisely where they stand on the issue of Israel/Palestine. With the 116th Congress now under way and the 2020 presidential campaign just out of the gate, the stakes could not be higher.

Noam Chomsky On Social Reality in the United States, Capitalist Ideology and Global Politics In the Oligarchic Era of Trump

https://truthout.org/…/chomsky-ocasio-cortez-and-other-new…/

Interview
Politics & Elections

Noam Chomsky: Ocasio-Cortez and Other Newcomers Are Rousing the Multitudes
by C.J. Polychroniou
January 30, 2019
Truthout 

PHOTO: US linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky is pictured during a press conference after visiting former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva at the Federal Police Superintendence in Curitiba, Brazil, after Lula was arrested on corruption charges, on September 20, 2018.  Heuler Andrey / AFP / Getty Images

A quick glance around the world today reveals that politics almost everywhere — from the federal government shutdown in the US to the power struggle in Venezuela and from Macron’s crisis in France and UK’s Brexit nightmare to the Israeli-Iranian rivalry – are engulfed in a state of uncertainty and turmoil. Meanwhile, oligarchy is replacing democracy as the widening social and economic gap between rich and poor continues unabated. So, who rules the world now? The US is in a state of relative decline, but neither Russia nor China has the capacity to control global developments. How do the super-rich and corporations factor into this equation? In this exclusive interview, world-renowned linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky provides penetrating insights into some of the most critical developments going on in the world today.

C.J. Polychroniou: After 35 days of a partial government shutdown, Trump signed a three-week funding bill but without securing money for the border wall. Leaving aside for the moment the surrealist nature of contemporary US political life, do you detect some hidden political strategy behind Trump’s funding conflict over the border wall with the Democrats?

Noam Chomsky: There’s a political strategy, but I’m not convinced that it’s hidden. With Trump, everything is pretty much on the surface. There have been constant efforts by political analysts to discern some deep geostrategic or sociopolitical thinking behind his performances, but they seem to me unconvincing. What he does seems readily explained simply on the well-grounded assumption that his doctrine is simple: ME!

Trump understands that he has a primary constituency — extreme wealth and corporate power — and that he has to serve its interests or he’s finished. That task has largely been assigned to the Ryans and McConnells, who have performed it admirably. Profits are skyrocketing, real wages are barely increasing despite low unemployment, regulations that might limit greed (and help mere people) are being dismantled, and the one legislative achievement — the tax scam — put lots of dollars in the right pockets and created a deficit that can be used as a pretext to undermine benefits. All is working smoothly — with analogues worldwide.

But Trump must maintain enough of a voting base to stay in power. That requires posturing as the defender of the ordinary guy against hated “elites” (always suppressing the true “masters of mankind,” to borrow Adam Smith’s phrase for the merchants and manufacturers who were “the principal architects” of policy). This act is helped along by such figures as Rush Limbaugh, who instructs his tens of millions of followers that they should beware of “the four corners of deceit: government, academia, science and media,” institutions that “are now corrupt and exist by virtue of deceit.” So, he argues, just listen to ME.

Meanwhile Trump must rise to the defense of the masses from awesome threats, chief among them now the hordes of “rapists,” “murderers” and “Islamic terrorists” he says are being mobilized down south to storm across the border and slaughter decent law-abiding white Christian Americans. We must therefore have a “beautiful wall” — which they will pay for. Trump promised that, and to back down would not only betray the trembling masses but also be a defeat, which his ego cannot tolerate.

The game is not really new. After all, the revered Ronald Reagan bravely donned his cowboy uniform and declared a National Emergency to protect the country from the Nicaraguan army, supposedly poised to destroy us all only two days’ drive from Harlingen, Texas. Trump is only carrying it further, helped by the fading of such infantile notions as “truth” — or “false realities,” to borrow Jared Kushner’s innovation. Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s admonition that policymakers must be “clearer than truth” has long passed into obsolescence. They can do far better in the atmosphere of “alternative facts” for those liberated from the four pillars of deceit.

I doubt that there is any deeper political strategy.

Trump understands that he has a primary constituency — extreme wealth and corporate power — and that he has to serve its interests or he’s finished.

Furthermore, such performances are rather natural, perhaps even necessary. As both parties have drifted to the right during the neoliberal assault on the population, the Democrats abandoned the working class and became pretty much what used to be called “moderate Republicans” (something that is beginning to change now in promising ways) while Republicans climbed so deeply into the pockets of the super-rich and corporate power that it became impossible for them to gain anywhere near enough votes on their actual policies. Antics of the Trump style fit the requirements, along with a variety of measures to suppress voting and increased reliance on the many regressive aspects of the constitutional system, which by now make it possible for a small minority of white Christian traditional rural older citizens to have effective control of the government. The tendency is increasing and may soon lead to a major political crisis since it is virtually ineradicable given the structure of the Senate, designed by the Framers so that the small states would ratify the mostly unpopular Federal Constitution. A topic for another day.

Responding to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s call for measures to tackle climate change, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders made the incredible statement that climate change should be left to God. Don’t you find it utterly mysterious and indeed dangerous that such thinking still prevails among US public officials in the 21st century? And, really, how well do you think that such messages resonate with the American public today?

Sanders’s insight is not new. She is in good company. After all, the former chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, James Inhofe, condemned efforts to address global warming as sacrilege: “God’s still up there,” he proclaimed, and “the arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.” It seems to work, at least in Oklahoma, where the senior senator has been in office since 1994. Doubtless well beyond Oklahoma, in a society with fundamentalist religious commitments that are far beyond the norm.

Yes, mysterious and dangerous — as is the fact that half of Republicans deny that global warming is even taking place, and of the rest, barely more than half think that humans have some responsibility for it. But there’s good news too. Trump’s new acting administrator of the EPA, former coal industry lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, agrees that global warming is probably happening — a problem he considers to be an “eight or nine” on a one-to-10 scale of concern, he informed Congress at his confirmation hearings.
Washington is intensifying its intervention, imposing new sanctions and selecting the egregious Elliott Abrams to join Bolton and Pompeo in what has been called “Trump’s axis of evil.”

Venezuela seems to be in the throes of a civil war. The US backs Juan Guaidó as interim president, in turn forcing Nicolás Maduro to consider expelling US diplomats, a decision he eventually backed away from, all while the leaders of China, Russia and Turkey slam Trump’s stance in Venezuela. First, what’s your assessment of what’s happening in Venezuela, and, second, why is it that much of the left worldwide continues to support Maduro when it is obvious that he has been a complete disaster?

Maduro has been a disaster, and the best the opposition has to offer is the self-declared President Juan Guaidó. About him little is known, apart from his great admiration for the neo-fascist Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, whom Guaidó praised for his commitment to “democracy [and] human rights,” as illustrated, for example, by his criticism of Brazil’s military dictatorship — because it … didn’t murder 30,000 people as in neighboring Argentina, the worst of the vicious military dictatorships that swept across South America from the ‘60s.

The roots of the Venezuelan disaster go back to failures of the Chavez administration, including its failure to diversify the economy, which is still almost entirely reliant on oil export. Venezuelan opposition economist Francisco Rodríguez, former chief Andean economist for the Bank of America, notes the failure of the government to set aside reserves during the period of high oil prices so it was at the mercy of international financial markets when prices dropped sharply in 2014 — and has been blocked from access to credit by harsh US sanctions, which have exacerbated the effects of what Rodríguez describes as the “atrocious” mismanagement of the economy under Maduro. Writing in Foreign Policy, Rodríguez observes that the policy of “Starving the Venezuelan economy of its foreign currency earnings risks turning the country’s current humanitarian crisis into a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe.” Arguably that is the purpose, following the Nixon-Kissinger script of “making the economy scream” to undermine the Allende regime. (That was the soft track; the hard track, soon implemented, was brutal military dictatorship.)

The drift toward civil war, with outside interference, is all too apparent. There is still room for negotiations among the contending parties, but it diminishes daily as the crisis deepens. Maduro is digging and Washington is intensifying its intervention, imposing new sanctions and selecting the egregious Elliott Abrams to join Bolton and Pompeo in what has been called “Trump’s axis of evil.” If skeletons can shudder, many must be doing so in the Central American countries that Abrams helped to ravage during Reagan’s terrorist wars.

Israel and Iran seem to be moving ever further closer toward a full-blown war. Why are they clashing in Syria?
Iran joined Russia in ensuring Assad’s victory in Syria, along with Iran’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah. Israel has been bombing Syria regularly. Four months ago the IDF reported over 200 strikes against Iranian targets since 2017, and they have been increasing since.

Iran is not under US control and is therefore an enemy.

Israel, of course, has overwhelming military dominance in the Middle East, even apart from its close alliance with the US, which lavishly funds its military with the most advanced weapons in the US arsenal and even uses Israel to pre-position US weapons. And, of course, Israel is the region’s sole nuclear power, the reason why Washington has regularly blocked international efforts, led by the Arab states and Iran, to establish a nuclear weapons-free zone (furthermore, WMD-free) in the Middle East. That would end any imagined Iran nuclear threat, but it is unacceptable because the primary US client state in the region would have to open its nuclear arsenal to inspection, and those who regard US law as having some force would have to stanch the flood of military support for Israel.

Iran is not under US control and is therefore an enemy. Furthermore, the US and Israel recognize that Iran is a deterrent to their free resort to force in the region. The same is true of Hezbollah, whose Iranian-supplied missiles target large parts of Israel. The US and Israel have been threatening to attack Iran for years (“all options are open”) in radical violation of the UN Charter (hence the US Constitution), but that is a matter of no concern for lawless states with overwhelming power. And Trump has, of course, escalated the confrontation by withdrawing from the Iran nuclear agreement. An actual invasion of Iran would be too costly and dangerous, but the US-Israel might consider attacking from a distance after somehow neutralizing Hezbollah (which would mean destroying much of Lebanon). The consequences could be devastating.

In Davos, the multibillionaires expressed annoyance at and even fear of the presence of radical Democrats in the US Congress and their talk of “soaking the rich” on taxes. Has a global financial oligarchy replaced democracy in today’s advanced capitalist world?

It’s impossible to replace something that has never really existed, but it’s true that the partial democracies of the West have been undermined further by the financialization of the international economy during the neoliberal years. That’s a large part of the reason for the bitterness, anger and resentment, mislabeled “populism,” that is shaking the foundations of the western democracies, where the centrist political parties that have run the political system are crumbling in election after election.

Many analysts have to account for the rise of such “populism” throughout the neoliberal capitalist world on the basis of psychic disorders — in one respected version, impulses “deep in our psyches and bodies beyond matters of fact: physical pain, fear of the future, a sense of our own mortality.” It is, however, not really necessary to appeal to an epidemic of irrationality and “emotional appeals” somehow spreading over the domains subjected to the neoliberal assault of the past generation, including the enormous growth of largely predatory financial institutions with its deleterious impact on democratic systems of governance.

Fear that the “rascal multitude” will threaten the property of the self-designated “men of best quality” traces back to the first modern democratic revolution in 17th century England, and was a major concern of the framers of the US Constitution in its successor a century later. It reappears constantly when there is even a minor threat to overwhelming power, as in the famous Powell memorandum of 1971, which warned that the world is practically coming to an end because of the slight infringement on overwhelming business domination of the society. The influential manifesto, sent to the US Chamber of Commerce, helped set off the harsh counterattack in the years since.

It’s not surprising that these fears are surfacing in Davos as a few young Democratic representatives are arousing the rascal multitude again.

For many years, a considerable majority of the US population has favored higher taxes on the rich, while they regularly decline. And now, a few recently elected members of Congress are advocating what the public wants, most vocally Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who even went so far as to suggest tax rates at a level regarded as optimal for the economy by the most prominent specialists (Nobel laureate Peter Diamond, Emmanuel Saez, among others). Scandalous indeed.

What else can one expect when 26 people now have as much wealth as half the world’s population, according to the latest of the regular Oxfam reports on inequality?
No wonder the “masters of mankind” are trembling.

ABOUT THE INTERVIWER:

C.J. Polychroniou is a political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. His main research interests are in European economic integration, globalization, the political economy of the United States and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He is a regular contributor to Truthout as well as a member of Truthout’s Public Intellectual Project. He has published several books and his articles have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. Many of his publications have been translated into several foreign languages, including Croatian, French, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish. He is the author of Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change, an anthology of interviews with Chomsky originally published at Truthout and collected by Haymarket Books.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEW SUBJECT:

Noam Chomsky (b. December 7, 1928) is institute professor emeritus in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Among his many books are Hegemony or Survival and Failed States. His newest book is Who Rules the World? (Metropolitan Books, the American Empire Project, 2016). His website is www.chomsky.info.