Russophobia and the Logic of Imperialism
Ava Lipatti
As it stands today, the U.S./NATO imperialist bloc has its eyes set
primarily on two countries: Russia and China. While NATO imperial terror,
including economic sanctions and military action, in countries such as
Ukraine, Syria, Iran, and North Korea constitute exploitative projects in
their own right, they also function to encircle Russia and China. Given the importance of Russia as an object of imperial desire,
clarity on the character of Russia is imperative in order to understand the
current economic and political crisis of imperialism. There are several important aspects to the question of Russia as it stands
today. The narrative of the Democratic Party is that "Russian hackers" rigged the
"democratic" "elections" and that Trump is a puppet of the Kremlin and of
Vladimir Putin in particular. There is virtually no substantial evidence for this claim. But what is the significance of this narrative? What are
its historical roots? There is also the common claim by elements of the left that Russia is in
fact an imperialist power in its own right, primarily for its actions in
Crimea, Syria, and Chechnya. However, Russia's relatively weak economy is
characterized primarily by the export of raw materials, rather than the
export of finance capital as in imperialist countries. The claim that
Russia is an imperialist country has been convincingly argued against both
by Sam Williams and by Renfrey Clarke and Roger Annis. But does this claim come from nowhere? What is its intellectual heritage?
The purpose of this article is not to prove that Russia..
Give us Liberty, or Give us Death
A Review of Phillip Nelson's "Remember the Liberty!"
Greg Maybury
With the anniversary of the enormously consequential 1967 Six-Day War (SDW)
between Israel and the Arab states (Egypt, Syria, Jordan) upon us, Phil
Nelson's book is a timely and welcome addition to the literature of that
event and the key people involved, and indeed, the era. Although on its
face about the deliberate attack by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) during
that conflict on the U.S. naval 'sig-int' ship the USS Liberty,
with the loss of 34 lives and over 170 casualties, it's much more than
that. Along with showcasing one of the most disgraceful episodes in U.S. military
history -- to say little of the self-serving, hypocritical and callous
manner in which the political and military establishment treats its service
personnel -- "Remember the Liberty!" presents us an opportunity to
place into broader, more urgent relief, the history of America's
increasingly dangerous -- some might say existentially so --
relationship with Israel, in addition to probing the role of both nations
in past events and those unfolding as we speak in and across the Greater
Middle East. His just released tome moreover, crucially invites us to reexamine the
virtually unexplored, indeed, wilfully neglected role played in
these events by arguably America's most psychologically unhinged and
criminally 'sectionable' of Oval Officeholders, one whose political
ascendancy and White House tenure may have been the most consequential of
all. We're talking here the then president of the U.S., Lyndon B. Johnson
(LBJ), he of the Gulf of Tonkin fame.
No More Confederate Nostalgia in NOLA
Darryl Barthe
For the last few days, armed men in New Orleans have been protesting the
removal of monuments to a failed, White Supremacist, republic. The workers
tasked with carrying out the removal of Confederate monuments in New
Orleans are working in flak jackets and with masks to obscure their
identities since threats of violence have surrounded the plan to dismantle
statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and Generals Robert E.
Lee and Pierre Beauregard. Many of the "protestors" at these monuments are
not from New Orleans but have traveled from elsewhere in the South in order
to express their disapproval of the City Council of New Orleans' decision
to remove monuments to men who raised armies against their own country in
order to defend slavery.
It would be easy to attribute this latest episode of white racial outrage
to the rising tide of "populism" surrounding the ascent of Donald Trump to
the Presidency. Yet, the monument to the Battle of Liberty Place, in
particular, had been the cause of controversy in 1989, 1993, and 2004.
White Supremacy and racism wrapped in a veil of "heritage" is not new for
Louisiana. It would be even easier to connect the liberal insistence on removing these
monuments to the Charleston Church Massacre. In June of 2015, Dylann Roof
murdered nine African Americans at a prayer meeting at Emanuel African
Methodist Episcopal Church because he believed black people "rape (white)
women and are taking over our country." Roof wrapped himself in symbols of
White Nationalism for pictures he posted of himself online before he went
on his rampage and so, of course, liberals concluded that these symbols
were problematic and, to be fair, these symbols are problematic. However,
what is more problematic is that the United States has existed as a White
Nationalist Republic for much longer than it has existed as a, nominally,
representative democracy where all citizens enjoy equal protection under
the law.
Marxism, Psychiatry, and Capitalism
An Interview with Dr. Bruce M. Z. Cohen
Brenan Daniels
Following my point above, the mental health system (I use this as an
umbrella term here to bring together psychiatry, psychology, and the
various support professions and agencies working in the area of mental
health including therapists, counselors, psychiatric nurses, and social
workers) and the education system in their contemporary forms are both
products of industrial capitalism. Briefly, compulsory schooling developed
across western societies in the nineteenth century due to the needs of
capital for higher skilled workers as well as to socially control working
class youth (through, for example, socializing them into the norms and
values of capitalism as the only "correct" way to think and understand the
world). As I discuss in my book, the mental health system develops during
the same period as another institution of social control: the asylums
separate the able from the non-able bodied, it pathologises and confines
problematic populations (primarily working class groups).
In neoliberal society, I argue that the connections between the mental
health system and the education system (as well as many other areas of
public and private life) have become much stronger and more explicit. For
example, my socio-historical case study of attention-deficit/hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD) in the book demonstrates that the origins of the diagnosis
began with psychologists' concern for deviant working class youth who
failed to "adapt" to the demands of compulsory schooling. A hundred years
later, we can still see in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) that
the symptoms of ADHD have nothing to do with having a mental illness but
rather denote the requirements for more productive and efficient students
and workers..
