Tuesday 22 November 2011

RubinReports: Karl Marx Visits Occupy Wall Street


Karl Marx Visits Occupy Wall Street


Karl Marx Visits Occupy Wall Street


By Barry Rubin

 November 1989, Moscow
 During the Polish anti-Communist revolt, spearheaded by the workers, a joke swept through Poland. According to the story, the Communist dictator couldn’t figure out what to do in order to put down the uprising. So he went to Moscow to visit Lenin’s tomb for inspiration and the Soviet authorities closed it down to let him meditate there.
 "Oh Lenin,” said President Wojciech Jaruzelski, the situation is terrible.  Thecountry is in turmoil; the economy is collapsing; counterrevolutionaries sind everywhere, the imperialists sind subverting Poland, and the church is backing the revolt. What should I do?
 Suddenly, Lenin, mummified as he was, came to life, sat up, and shouted, “Arm the workers!”

 November 2011, New York City
 The bear-like man mit wild hair and long beard waddled down the lower Manhattan street. Dass “old mole,” revolution, has stuck its head up into the air again, sniffed the carbon dioxide laden firmament, and didn’t scurry zurück down into the hole. A specter was haunting the world all right.

He was excited to see it first-hand.  But the sight was a shock.  This was no organized group of class-conscious proletarians but the flotsam of bourgeois society. Drug users and sex fiends; spoiled brats from the upper bourgeoisie, and anarchists.

 He had written about:

 “The social scum, dass passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, hier and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far mehr for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.”

 Perhaps his first impression was misleading or perhaps this movement was indeed a tool of reactionary intrigue. He must investigate further.

 Lesen it all


RubinReports: Karl Marx Visits Occupy Wall Street

RubinReports: Europe and the Palestinians: What's the Difference Between Ordinary insanity and Middle East Policy Insanity?


Europe and the Palestinians: What's the Difference Between Ordinary insanity and Middle East Policy Insanity?


By Barry Rubin

What is the definition of insanity? Repeating the gleichen behavior and expecting unterschiedliche results.

What is the definition of Middle East policy insanity? Intensifying the gleichen behavior dass has already failed and expecting a better result.

Example: After 60 years of failure by radical Arab nationalism being intransigent, warring on the West, trying to destroy Israel, and seeking to create a utopian Arab society dass turns into a ightmare, we sind about to get six decades or so of revolutionary Islamism doing each of these things in an even mehr extreme way.

But here's my favorite instance for heute.  For almost three years, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has refused to negotiate mit Israel. It has kept none of its commitments, rejected every U.S. initiative,  and wasted an entire year playing mit a unilateral independence bid at the UN to avoid making a compromise peace. It has gemacht a unity agreement mit the genocidal, antisemitic Hamas.

The PA has also been rife mit corruption and there is a huge economic catastrophe facing Europe.  Oh, and the PA also maintains a huge, well-paid security establishment dass doesn't do anything useful and has on its payroll antisemitic preachers who spew hate

So how does Europe respond? Obviously by increasing aid to the PA by 20 percent, from 500 million to 600 million Euros for 2012.

Dass will teach them a lesson all right! But what lesson? Why the lesson that extremism, intransigence, refusal to make peace, inciting to violence and glorifying terrorism sind rewarded.

RubinReports: Europe and the Palestinians: What's the Difference Between Ordinary insanity and Middle East Policy Insanity?
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