États-Unis : Socialist Alternative soutient Cornel West à la présidence – 5 avril 2024

L’organisation de gauche américaine Socialist Alternative, qui dans le passé a soutenu le sénateur socialiste américain « indépendant » Bernie Sanders en tant qu’« aile gauche du possible » en 2016 et 2020, s’apprête désormais à soutenir la campagne présidentielle de l’universitaire de gauche Cornel West aux élections présidentielles. Élections de 2024.

Alternative socialiste

Plus récemment, dans un article publié le mois dernier sur son site Internet intitulé « Le système bipartite nous tue : pouvons-nous construire une alternative ? Socialist Alternative désigne le parti « Justice pour tous » récemment formé par West comme un potentiel « parti de masse de la gauche de la classe ouvrière ». En réalité, le parti Justice pour tous est dépourvu de tout programme politique clair et a été créé principalement pour permettre à l’Occident d’obtenir le statut de électeur.

Cornel West
Socialist Alternative a déclaré pour la première fois son soutien à West l’année dernière, lorsque l’ancien démocrate et ancien membre des Socialistes démocrates d’Amérique briguait l’investiture présidentielle du Parti vert – après avoir initialement annoncé qu’il solliciterait l’investiture du Parti populaire, une opération politique mis en place par d’anciens partisans de Sanders. West s’est ensuite retiré de la course du Parti Vert et a déclaré qu’il se présentait comme indépendant. Aucune de ces girations politiques n’a fait réfléchir l’Alternative Socialiste.

Le 16 juin 2023, le Comité exécutif de Socialist Alternative a salué la campagne de West, déclarant que sa « candidature a le potentiel d’offrir une alternative de gauche cruellement nécessaire aux travailleurs et aux opprimés ». Dans cette déclaration, il n’y avait pas moins de 15 références distinctes à Bernie Sanders. Le Comité Exécutif a déploré :

La loyauté de Sanders et de la « Squad » envers le Parti démocrate a été utilisée au service d’attaques brutales contre les travailleurs, y compris le blocage de la grève des cheminots, et elle a profondément sapé la capacité d’organiser les mouvements des travailleurs, dilapidant l’élan. Bernie a généré avec sa campagne une « révolution politique » contre la classe milliardaire.

En août, Socialist Alternative a annoncé une campagne « Les étudiants pour Cornel West », écrivant : « Nous avons besoin d’un changement systémique, et la campagne de Cornel West nous offre l’opportunité de riposter. … Pour être efficace, nous avons besoin que la campagne de Cornel West ait un caractère populaire et de masse. Les jeunes ont un rôle central à jouer dans la création de l’élan initial de la base qui peut attirer des couches de plus en plus nombreuses de personnes avides de changement. Depuis lors, Socialist Alternative a fait campagne pour l’Ouest sur tous les campus où elle est active. Certains voient cette activité comme un moyen de se connecter avec le public à travers un nom qu’ils peuvent reconnaître, puis de l’amener à adopter leur propre point de vue en utilisant simplement la campagne de Cornel West à leurs propres fins.

Dans un article de novembre, Socialist Alternative a fait part de ses inquiétudes concernant « les électeurs de gauche et progressistes qui en ont assez des fausses promesses des démocrates » et a appelé l’Ouest à « entrer dans le vide » causé par les probables élections à venir entre deux candidats largement méprisés. , Trump et « le génocide Joe ».

Le soutien de l’organisation à la campagne occidentale en tant qu’opposition « de gauche et pro-travailleurs » aux démocrates et aux républicains est une sorte de vœu pieux. West est un artiste à saveur de gauche.

Le bilan politique de Cornel West

Le Parti démocrate mène actuellement une « guerre totale » contre les partis tiers et les candidats indépendants, y compris ceux de campagne de l’Ouest, dans le but de les empêcher d’obtenir le droit de vote. Cela ne signifie cependant pas que l’Ouest représente un véritable défi pour le système bipartite.

Tout examen sérieux du bilan de West réduirait à la fois la capacité de sa campagne à maintenir cette immense colère liée à l’impasse de la politique capitaliste et présenterait l’Alternative socialiste comme une organisation politique vide qui s’accroche simplement à l’aile gauche des démocrates.

West a passé des décennies à promouvoir et à soutenir les politiciens démocrates. Il a rejoint le parti radical libéral Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) dans les années 1980 et en a été le président honoraire. Il a fait campagne pour Jesse Jackson dans les années 1980 et a soutenu la campagne de Barack Obama en 2008 avant de susciter des critiques après les élections.

Socialistes démocrates d’Amérique

West a émis des critiques limitées à l’égard du Parti démocrate, qualifiant Obama de « mascotte noire des oligarques de Wall Street ». West, ainsi que Socialist Alternative, ont participé au cirque politique connu sous le nom de Parti populaire, formé en 2017 sur la base de pressions exercées sur Sanders pour qu’il lance un nouveau parti. West et Socialist Alternative ont également soutenu les campagnes présidentielles de Sanders.

Jill Stein

En 2016, West et Socialist Alternative ont décidé de soutenir la candidate du Parti vert, Jill Stein, après que Sanders ait soutenu Clinton. En 2020, ils se sont séparés, West appelant à voter pour Biden aux élections générales. Howie Hawkins, co-fondateur du Parti vert et candidat à la présidentielle de 2020, soutenu par Socialist Alternative.

Howie Hawkins

Le Parti Vert fonctionne comme un groupe de pression orienté vers les dernières modes d’un segment de la classe politique et universitaire avec des solutions anti-scientifiques bizarres à de nombreux problèmes. Les Verts font également preuve d’un déclencheur émotionnel qui les pousse à un bellicisme vicieux.

S’il y a un fil conducteur dans la transition de West d’une alliance politique à une autre, c’est bien son vague réformisme brisé. Dans son livre The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism, West dresse explicitement une longue liste de changements mineurs visant à instaurer un « monde meilleur ». La philosophie de West appartient à l’école du pragmatisme américain telle qu’elle a été développée notamment par Richard. Rorty, avec qui West a étudié à Princeton au début des années 1970. Le pragmatisme a différentes variétés, toutes tournant autour d’un déni de la possibilité d’une vérité objective et, lié à cela, d’un rejet de l’histoire en tant que processus régi par des lois dans lequel des modèles peuvent être observés et modifiés. Dans ses formes modernes et en particulier dans les écrits de Rorty, le pragmatisme s’oppose explicitement à toute intervention dans la vie sociale visant à changer le cours des événements pour le mieux pour la plupart des gens.

L’approche pragmatique de Cornel West en matière de politique et de théorie implique un mélange éclectique de politiques nationalistes noires, raciales et identitaires, qu’il combine avec des conceptions ouvertement religieuses et irrationalistes.

Life During Wartime – On the Road in Donbass – by Pepe Escobar – 13 Feb 2024

• 2,700 WORDS • 

Pepe Escobar embarked on a journey across Donbass to share his thoughts on the many first-hand encounters with the locals, who show unbreakable resilience.

You are given a name by the War:/it’s a call sign, not nickname – much more./Lack of fancy cars here and iPads,/But you have APC and MANPADS./Social media long left behind,/Children’s drawings with “Z” stick to mind./’Likes” and “thumbs up” are valued as dust,/But the prayers from people you trust./Hold On, Soldier, my brother, my friend,/The hostility comes to an end./War’s unable to stop its decease,/Grief and suffering will turn into peace./Life returns to the placid format,/With your callsign, inscribed in your heart./ From the war, as a small souvenir:/Far away, but eternally near.

Inna Kucherova, Call Sign, in A Letter to a Soldier, published December 2022

It’s a cold, rainy, damp morning in the deep Donbass countryside, at a secret location close to the Urozhaynoye direction; a nondescript country house, crucially under the fog, which prevents the work of enemy drones.

Father Igor, a military priest, is blessing a group of local contract-signed volunteers to the Archangel Gabriel battalion, ready to go to the front lines of the US vs. Russia proxy war. The man in charge of the battalion is one of the top-ranking officers of Orthodox Christian units in the DPR.

A small shrine is set up in the corner of a small, cramped room, decorated with icons. Candles are lit, and three soldiers hold the red flag with the icon of Jesus in the center. After prayers and a small homily, Father Igor blesses each soldier.

Paying my respects to the children victims of Ukrainian shelling at a DIY memorial off the ‘Road of Life’.

Quite an honor. This pic is now on the wall of the HQ of the Dmitry Donskoy Orthodox Christian battalion in Donbass.

With the kamikaze drone and DIY mine-landing rover specialists at an undisclosed location in Donetsk.

This is yet another stop in a sort of itinerant icon road show, started in Kherson, then Zaporozhye and all the way to the myriad DPR front lines, led by my gracious host Andrey Afanasiev, military correspondent for the Spas channel, and later joined in Donetsk by a decorated fighter for the Archangel Michael battalion, an extremely bright and engaging young man codename Pilot.

There are between 28 and 30 Orthodox Christian battalion fighting in Donbass. That’s the power of Orthodox Christianity. To see them at work is to understand the essentials: how the Russian soul is capable of any sacrifice to protect the core values of its civilization. Throughout Russian history, it’s individuals that sacrifice their lives to protect the community – and not vice-versa. Those who survived – or perished – in the siege of Leningrad are only one among countless examples.

So the Orthodox Christian battalion were my guardian angels as I returned to Novorossiya to revisit the rich black soil where the old “rules-based” world order came to die.

The Living Contradictions of the ‘Road of Life’

The first thing that hits you when you arrive in Donetsk nearly 10 years after Maidan in Kiev is the incessant loud booms. Incoming and mostly outgoing. After such a long, dreary time, interminable shelling of civilians (which are invisible to the collective West), and nearly 2 years after the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO), this is still a city at war; still vulnerable along the three lines of defense behind the front.

The “Road of Life” has got to be one of the epic war misnomers in Donetsk. “Road” is a euphemism for a dark, muddy bog plied back and forth virtually non-stop by military vehicles. “Life” applies because the Donbass military actually donate food and humanitarian aid to the locals at the Gornyak neighborhood every single week.

The heart of the Road of Life is the Svyato Blagoveschensky temple, cared for by Father Viktor – who at the time of my visit was away on rehabilitation, as several parts of his body were hit by shrapnel. I am shepherded by Yelena, who shows me around the impeccably clean temple bearing sublime icons – including 13th century Prince Alexander Nevsky, who in 1259 became the supreme Russian ruler, Sovereign of Kiev, Vladimir and Novgorod. Gornyak is a deluge of black mud, under the incessant rain, with no running water and electricity. Residents are forced to walk at least two kilometers, every day, to buy groceries: there are no local buses.

Yelena, the caretaker of Father Michael’s temple at the ‘Road of Life’ in Donetsk.

Alexander Nevsky’s icon at Father Michael’s temple.

In one of the back rooms, Svetlana carefully arranges mini-packages of food essentials to be distributed every Sunday after liturgy. I meet Mother Pelageya, 86 years old, who comes to the temple every Sunday, and would not even dream of ever leaving her neighborhood.

Svetlana organizing food packages out of donations by the DPR military to civilians close to the front line.

Mother Pelageya, 86, at Father Michael’s temple in the ‘Road of Life’ in Donetsk.

Gornyak is in the third line of defense. The loud booms – as in everywhere in Donetsk – are nearly non-stop, incoming and outgoing. If we follow the road for another 500 meters or so and turn right, we are only 5 km away from Avdeyevka – which may be about to fall in days, or weeks at most.

At the entrance of Gornyak there’s the legendary DonbassActiv chemical factory – now inactive – which actually fabricated the red stars which shine over the Kremlin, using a special gas technology that was never reproduced. In a side street to the Road of Life, local residents built an improvised shrine to honor the child victims of Ukrainian shelling. One day this is going to end: the day when the DPR military completely controls Avdeyevka.

The Donbass Activ chemical plant at the entrance of the ‘Road of Life’ in Donetsk

‘Mariupol Is Russia’

The traveling priesthood exits the digs of the Archangel Gabriel battalion and heads to a meeting in a garage with the Dmitry Donskoy orthodox battalion, fighting in the Ugledar direction. That’s where I meet the remarkable Troya, the battalion’s medic, a young woman who had a comfy job as a deputy officer in a Russian district before she decided to volunteer.

Onwards to a cramped military dormitory where a cat and her kittens reign as mascots, choosing the best place in the room right by the iron stove. Time to bless the fighters of the Dimitri Zalunsky battalion, named after St. Dimitri of Thessaloniki, who are fighting in the Nikolskoye direction.

At each successive ceremony, you can’t help being stricken by the purity of the ritual, the beauty of the chants, the grave expressions in the faces of the volunteers, all ages, from teenagers to sexagenarians. Deeply touching. This in so many aspects is the Slavic counterpart of the Islamic Axis of Resistance fighting in West Asia. It is a form of asabiyya – “community spirit”, as I used it in a different context referring to the Yemeni Houthis supporting “our people” in Gaza.

Mariupol. Destroyed to the left, rebuilt to the right.

’Mariupol is Russia’. The port is to the left.

Mariupol building

So yes: deep down in the Donbass countryside, in communion with those living life during wartime, we feel the enormity of something inexplicable and vast, full of endless wonder, as if touching the Tao by silencing the recurrent loud booms. In Russian there is, of course, a word for it: “загадка“, roughly translated as “enigma” or “mystery”.

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I left the Donetsk countryside to go to Mariupol – and to be hit by the proverbial shock when one is reminded of the utter destruction perpetrated by the neo-nazi Azov battalion* in the spring of 2022, from the city center to the shoreline along the port then all the way to the massive Azovstal Iron and Steel Works.

The theatre – rather the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre – nearly destroyed by the Azov battalion is now being meticulously restored, and the next in line are scores of classical buildings downtown. In some neighborhoods the contrast is striking: on the left side of the road, a destroyed building; on the right side, a brand new one.

At the port, a red, white and blue stripe lays down the law: “Mariupol is Russia”. I make a point to go to the former entrance of Azovstal, where the remaining Azov battalion fighters, around 1,700, surrendered to Russian soldiers in May 2022. As much as Berdyansk may eventually become a sort of Monaco in the Sea of Azov, Mariupol may also have a bright future as a tourism, leisure and cultural center and last but not least, a key maritime entrepot of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasia Economic Union.

The Mystery of the Icon

Back from Mariupol I was confronted with one of the most extraordinary stories woven with the fabric of magic under war. In a nondescript parking lot, suddenly I’m face to the face with The Icon.

The icon – of Mary Mother of God – was gifted to the whole of Donbass by veterans of the Zsloha Spetsnaz, when they came in the summer of 2014. The legend goes that the icon started to spontaneously generate myrrh: as it felt the pain suffered by the local people, it started to cry. During the storming of Azovstal, the icon suddenly made an appearance, out of nowhere, brought in by a pious soul. Two hours later, the legend goes, the DPR, Russian and Chechen forces found their breakthrough.

The icon is always on the move along the SMO hot spots in Donbass. People in charge of the relay know one another, but they can never guess where the icon heads next; everything develops as a sort of magical mystery tour. It’s no wonder Kiev has offered a huge reward for anyone – especially fifth columnists – capable of capturing the icon, which then would be destroyed.

Father Igor reciting prayers.

The Orthodox icon “Mary Mother of God”, gifted to the people of Donbass.

The shrine set up at one of the Orthodox Christian battalion, where Father Igor blesses the soldiers.

The shrine set up at one of the Orthodox Christian battalion, where Father Igor blesses the soldiers.

At a night gathering in a compound in the western outskirts of Donetsk – lights completely out in every direction – I have the honor to join one of the top-ranking officers of the Orthodox units in the DPR, a tough as nails yet jovial fellow fond of Barcelona under Messi, as well as the commander of Archangel Michael battalion, codename Alphabet. We are in the first line of defense, only 2 km away from the front line. The incessant loud booms – especially outgoing – are really loud.

The conversation ranges from military tactics on the battlefield, especially in the siege of Avdeyevka, which will be totally encircled in a matter of days, now with the help of Special Forces, paratroopers and lots of armored vehicles, to impressions of the Tucker Carlson interview with Putin (they heard nothing new). The commanders note the absurdity of Kiev not acknowledging their hit on the Il-76 carrying 65 Ukrainian POWs – totally dismissing the plight of their own PoWs. I ask them why Russia simply does not bomb Avdeyevka to oblivion: “Humanism”, they answer.

The DIY Rover From Hell

In a cold, foggy morning at a secret location in central Donetsk – once again, no drones overhead – I meet two kamikaze drone specialists, codename Hooligan and his observer, codename Letchik. They set up a kamikaze drone demo – of course unarmed – while a few meters away mechanical engineer specialist “The Advocate” sets up his own demo of a DIY mine-delivery rover.

That’s a certified lethal version of the Yandex food delivery rovers now quite popular around Moscow. “Advocate” shows off the maneuverability and ability of his little toy to face any terrain. The mission: each rover is equipped with two mines, to be placed right under an enemy tank. Success so far has been extraordinary – and the rover will be upgraded.

’The Advocate’ setting up his DIY mine-delivering rover test

There’s hardly a more daring character in Donetsk than Artyom Gavrilenko, who built a brand new school cum museum right in the middle of the first line of defense – once again only 2 km or so away from the frontline. He shows me around the museum, which performs the enviable task of outlining the continuity between the Great Patriotic War, the USSR adventure in Afghanistan against the US-financed and weaponized jihad, and the proxy war in Donbass.

At the school/museum in Donetsk only 2 km away from the front line

That’s a parallel, DIY version of the official Museum of War in central Donetsk, close to the Shaktar Donetsk football arena, which features stunning memorabilia from the Great Patriotic War as well as fabulous shots by Russian war photographers.

So Donetsk students – emphasis in math, history, geography, languages – will be growing up deeply enmeshed in the history of what for all practical purposes is a heroic mining town, extracting wealth from the black soil while its dreams are always inexorably clouded by war.

We went into the DPR using backroads to cross the border to the LPR not far from Lugansk. This is a slow, desolate border which reminds me of the Pamirs in Tajikistan, basically used by locals. In and out, I was politely questioned by a passport control officer from Dagestan and his seconds-in-command. They were fascinated by my travels in Donbass, Afghanistan and West Asia – and invited me to visit the Caucasus. As we left deep into the freezing night for the long trek ahead back to Moscow, the exchange was priceless:

“You are always welcome here.”

“I’ll be back.”

“Like Terminator!”

………………………………

https://archive.ph/9xDgA

*The Azov Battalion is a terrorist organization banned in Russia.

(Republished from Sputnik International )