The very idea that our elected representatives should need "authorization" to go to Afghanistan and investigate for themselves what the administration is up to ( it is known to lie to the American people about its doings -- as all administrations do) is an outrageous anti-democratic attack on the American people's right to know (Pelosi should resign from the House for supporting Biden on this). This is, at least, the ideal of our democracy. In reality of course, we live in an anti-working class bourgeois semi-democracy controlled by the 1% and that's who is ultimately represented by the members of the House so it doesn't matter what our elected representatives find out over in Afghanistan as the ruling class has already made all the major decisions. Nevertheless, since we are demanding a real people's democracy led by the working class and its allies, we should stand up for the principle of the right of elected representatives to go and do as they choose to find out the truth. This is a principle to support even though we won't (with few exceptions) have real elected people's representatives until the overthrow of bourgeoise rule and the establishment of a people's state.
Thursday, August 26, 2021
Wednesday, August 18, 2021
Cuba and Covid
There is a crisis in Cuba, but the NYT doesn't even begin to tell us who or what is responsible. These deaths and this suffering can be laid at the doorstep of President (the buck stops with me) Biden and the Democrats who are in power in Congress. Uninformed and ignorant Americans, kept that way by the mainstream media including AP and the NYT, don't know what the rest of the world does and that's "It's the Blockade Stupid!"
Monday, August 16, 2021
Learning from Ancient Greece
There are lessons to be learned from Ancient Greece, but did Dr. Kagan really learn them? “In 1997 he signed the founding principles of the Project for the New American Century, a think tank of which his son Robert was a creator that called for the country to reassert its power in the post-Cold War world. In 2000 he and his son Frederick published “While America Sleeps,” which likewise criticized what they saw as a dangerous drift in U.S. foreign policy”.
Monday, August 9, 2021
Women in Albania
I don't envy any party trying to build socialism in Albania but according to Wikipedia "Under the communist government of Albania, an official ideology of gender equality was promoted. In the first democratic election after the fall of communism, the number of women deputies in parliament fell from 75 in the last parliament of communist Albania to 9. In a turbulent period after 1991 the position of women worsened.There is a religious revival among Albanians which in the case of Muslims sometimes means that women are pushed back to the traditional role of mother and housekeeper. As of 2013 women represented 22.9% of the parliament." This NYT article presents a dreary picture of the status of women but there is no doubt that their position has degenerated under the conditions of current Euro-American capitalism (tens of thousands of young Albanian women are yearly sold off as sex slaves). Socialist Albania, whatever problems it had, instituted the greatest revolutionary improvement in the lives of women in the entire history of modern Albania and it has been downhill ever since the overthrow of the socialist government. Whether Western style bourgeois "democracy" will bring about social emancipation and equality for Albanian women remains to be seen.
