Whistleblower Julian Assange has given one of his most incendiary interviews ever in a John Pilger Special, courtesy of Dartmouth Films, in which he summarizes what can be gleaned from the tens of thousands of Clinton emails released by WikiLeaks this year.
READ TRANSCRIPT: http://on.rt.com/7ty5
Un passo dell'intervista che Julian Assange ha concesso al giornalista australiano John Pilger: l'ISIS è stato pagato dai governi dell'Arabia Saudita e del Qatar, gli stessi che hanno sempre finanziato la Fondazione Clinton. L'intervista completa è qui: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sbT3_9dJY4
La sconfitta della Clinton è anzitutto la sconfitta di Obama che, sceso in campo a suo fianco, vede bocciata la propria presidenza. Conquistata, nella campagna elettorale del 2008, con la promessa che avrebbe sostenuto non solo Wall Street ma anche «Main Street», ossia il cittadino medio. Da allora la middle class ha visto peggiorare la propria condizione, il tasso di povertà è aumentato, mentre i ricchi sono divenuti sempre più ricchi. Ora, presentandosi come paladino della middle class, conquista la presidenza Donald Trump, l’outsider miliardario.
Che cosa cambia nella politica estera degli Stati uniti con il cambio di guardia alla Casa Bianca? Certamente non il fondamentale obiettivo strategico di rimanere la potenza globale dominante. Posizione che vacilla sempre più. Gli Usa stanno perdendo terreno sul piano economico e anche politico rispetto alla Cina, alla Russia e ad altri «paesi emergenti». Per questo gettano la spada sul piatto della bilancia. Da qui la serie di guerre in cui Hillary Clinton ha svolto un ruolo da protagonista.
Come risulta dalla sua biografia autorizzata, fu lei che in veste di first lady convinse il consorte presidente a demolire la Jugoslavia con la guerra, iniziando la serie degli «interventi umanitari» contro «dittatori» accusati di «genocidio». Come risulta dalle sue mail, fu lei che in veste di segretaria di stato convinse il presidente Obama a demolire la Libia con la guerra e a iniziare la stessa operazione contro la Siria. Fu lei a promuovere la destabilizzazione interna del Venezuela e del Brasile e il «Pivot to Asia» statunitense in funzione anticinese. Ed è sempre stata lei, tramite anche la Fondazione Clinton, a preparare in Ucraina il terreno per il putsch di Piazza Maidan che ha dato il via alla escalation Usa/Nato contro la Russia.
Dato che tutto questo non ha impedito il relativo declino della potenza statunitense, spetta all’amministrazione Trump correggere il tiro mirando allo stesso obiettivo. Irrealistica è l’ipotesi che intenda abbandonare il sistema di alleanze incentrato sulla Nato sotto comando Usa: sicuramente però batterà i pugni sul tavolo per ottenere dagli alleati un maggiore impegno soprattutto in termini di spesa militare.
Trump potrebbe ricercare un accordo con la Russia, anche con l’intento di dividerla dalla Cina verso la quale annuncia misure economiche, accompagnate da un ulteriore rafforzamento della presenza militare Usa nella regione Asia-Pacifico.
Tali decisioni, che porteranno sicuramente ad altre guerre, non dipendono dal temperamento bellicoso di Donald Trump, ma dai centri di potere dove si trova il quadro di comando da cui dipende la stessa Casa Bianca. Sono i colossali gruppi finanziari che dominano l’economia (solo il valore azionario delle società quotate a Wall Street supera quello dell’intero reddito nazionale degli Stati uniti). Sono le multinazionali, le cui dimensioni economiche superano quelle di interi stati, che delocalizzano le produzioni nei paesi che offrono forza lavoro a basso costo, provocando all’interno chiusura di fabbriche e disoccupazione (da qui il peggioramento delle condizioni della middle class statunitense). Sono i giganti dell’industria bellica che guadagnano con le guerre.
È il capitalismo del 21° secolo, di cui gli Usa sono la massima espressione, che crea una crescente polarizzazione tra ricchezza e povertà. L’1% della popolazione mondiale possiede più del restante 99%.
Alla classe dei superricchi appartiene il neopresidente Trump, al quale il premier Renzi, in veste di Arlecchino servitore di due padroni, ha già giurato fedeltà dopo averla giurata al presidente Obama.
USA : Welcome to the Trump show
- 15 Nov 2016
The rise to power of the “real Donald Trump” has been met with fear and horror by most observers. Beyond his firebrand discourse against the elites and a campaign centered around awakening a national feeling with the slogan “Make America Great Again”, what will his policies mean for the 99% ? In order to separate truth from fiction in his programme, we have interviewed John Catalinotto, editor of the journal Workers World and keen observer of American politics.
Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. How would you define him ?
Europeans could think of Donald Trump as a combination of the worst characteristics of Silvio Berlusconi and Marine Le Pen. He is personally rich, egotistic and arrogant. He’s taking an executive office to manage the biggest state budget and the most destructive military machine in the world. Plenty of other capitalist politicians, Republicans and Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, also support reactionary and pro-war politics, which are dangerous for the world. What’s different is that Donald Trump openly gives voice and a platform for anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, racist and anti-women rhetoric and thus his victory promotes a mobilization of the most bigoted segments of U.S. society.
Comparing to the policies of the Obama administration, what could change for working class, afro american, latin american as well as for immigrant people?
In the United States, the working class consists of many people of Indigenous, African-American, Latin-American, east and west Asian and Pacific Island heritage, including many immigrants. The workers are men and women; they are LGBTQ. They are employed and unemployed. A large minority of workers are men of European heritage.
I would expect that Trump in the White House and the Republicans controlling both houses of Congress will mean an open attack on all workers, on their unions, on their social benefits. Something like what happened in Argentina when Macri replaced Cristina Kirchner. Something like what happened in the states of Wisconsin and also North Carolina when “Tea Party” Republicans became governors. It’s not that Clinton or even Obama promote workers’ rights, but they did not open a direct attack on these rights.
Obama deported 1-2 million undocumented workers. Trump says he will even more actively deport undocumented immigrants and his election has spread fear in the immigrant community. Trump has spoken out in support of aggressive police tactics, so we can expect Trump’s election to make the cops even more arrogant and aggressive in the Black communities. Trump vilifies Muslims and the worst racists are assaulting Muslims.
But his election has another side. Sophisticated politicians like Obama and even Clinton hide the utter decay of U.S. imperialism. Trump’s election exposes the rot. He is already recruiting his governing “team” from the cesspool of U.S. politics and media. It has aroused not only fear but rage. Tens of thousands of people have come into the streets, many who never demonstrated before in their lives. They now know they cannot remain neutral. They have been propelled to take a stand. Some feel personally under attack by a Trump presidency. Some feel solidarity with groups that are the direct targets and will join organizations that defend them. Whatever the initial spark, once they are in motion their lives can change. It is our job, as revolutionaries, to give direction to that change.
How was the mainstream media coverage of Trump’s campaign ? Is Trump the tree that hides the forest?
There are different wings of what I would call the corporate media. There is an establishment media: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, the broadcast TV news and CNN and MSNBC. There is a large ultra-right wing media: Fox News, Murdoch’s newspapers, radio talk shows.
In the beginning of Trump’s campaign he got enormous free publicity from both wings of the corporate media. This was partly driven by Trump’s position as a bizarre billionaire celebrity. Covering him made profits for the media. Plus it injected a good dose of reactionary ideology into the campaign. It created a reactionary “populist” alternative to Bernie Sanders’ campaign.
Regarding what comes next, one thing for sure is that Trump is incapable of “bringing jobs back to the U.S.” by renegotiating or breaking trade pacts. The industrial jobs are gone less because of globalization than because of the inexorable technological advance of capitalist industry. The economic crisis will deepen. Capitalism is at a dead end. The left must find a way to defend the most oppressed sectors of the working class – more than that, it is these sectors that will provide leadership – and unite the whole class first against the reactionary Trump policies and then against the whole rotten capitalist system.
What can we expect from his foreign policy?
Actually the decline of U.S. imperialism pushes the government toward adventurous wars no matter who the president is. Obama campaigned to end wars, but has intervened in at least seven countries with military forces and many more through subversion. Hillary Clinton is a pro-Pentagon warmonger. Trump is more erratic, a loose cannon, even though he claims to be ready to negotiate with Russia. He also says he wants to break the deal with Iran and with Cuba. And impose tariffs on China. We must be ready to oppose all new wars.
So you believe he will just follow the same course?
Both Trump and Clinton, both the establishment Republicans and the establishment Democrats and even the Bernie Sanders wing serve the interests of U.S. imperialism. Imperialism is not a policy of a group of politicians. It is an economic system that means the domination of finance capital. The current failure of this system to generate profits by relatively peaceful measure means that whoever is at the helm of U.S. imperialism has enormous pressures driving them toward war.
Everyone who is aware of the events of the last decade knows that Hillary Clinton supported all the wars: against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, the subversion against Venezuela and other progressive nationalist governments in Latin America. If they follow closely, they know that even though Obama came into office with plans to end the U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon pushed him to first increase troops in Afghanistan and that the U.S. has now begun to reintroduce troops into Iraq. In Syria a temporary agreement between the U.S. and Russia was almost immediately sabotaged by a military attack that had the support of elements of the U.S. state apparatus, certainly of the Pentagon.
Trump has never been involved in U.S. foreign policy decisions so he has no track record. What he said during the election campaign was aimed at what he believed would help his chances for elections. It may have little to no relation to what he actually does in office. Sometimes what he says in the beginning of one sentence is contradicted by what he says at the end of the sentence. He said the U.S. will recognize Jerusalem as capital of Israel, that he will break the deal with Iran and with Cuba. He also said he would follow a more open policy of negotiations with Russia. I doubt any serious government has confidence in his words of peace. We in the small pro-communist movement here certainly have no confidence he will wage a less aggressive policy. We need to build a movement here that can fight both U.S. imperialism abroad and his reactionary policies at home.
And how should this movement emerge?
There is a certain amount of confusion in the anti-imperialist movement in Europe about Trump’s role. One can understand the Schadenfreude about Clinton’s defeat. They all know how aggressive Clinton is. They may have given up on the U.S. working class. But we in the United States need to develop a movement against U.S. wars. We can only do it if the most oppressed sectors of the U.S. working class not only join in but lead this struggle. Those abroad who gloat over Trump’s victory alienate the immigrants, the Black population, the activist women, the LGBTQ people, the Muslims, all who fear a Trump presidency or better, are moved to rage against a president who is “not their president.”
The only positive thing that came out of this disgusting 18-month-long bourgeois election is that thousands of people have been demonstrating day after day since the election against the new president. Some may be for Hillary Clinton for some misguided reasons, but mainly those in the streets are against Trump and all he stands for. They are not in the streets because he says he’ll negotiate with Russia. Those here who want to fight imperialist war have to be in the streets with all these people. They are frightened, they are angry, they are going through a change, they are reexamining all their ideas. We have to be with them to try to win them to fight not only Trump’s racism, sexism and xenophobia but all imperialist war.
John Catalinotto has been active in anti-imperialist politics since the October Missile Crisis in 1962. Since 1982, he has been managing editor of Workers World, the last pro-communist newspaper still published weekly in print in the USA. He was a co-organizer of the Yugoslavia War Crimes Tribunal in New York in June 2000 and the Iraq War Crimes Tribunal in New York in 2004, both with the International Action Center, a U.S.-based organization founded by Human Rights activist Ramsey Clark. He has edited and contributed to two books, Metal of Dishonor about depleted uranium and Hidden Agenda: the U.S.-NATO Takeover of Yugoslavia. He has an upcoming book, Turn the Guns Around: Mutinies, Soldier Revolts and Revolutions.
Alex Anfruns is a lecturer, journalist and editor-in-chief of independent media outlet Investig’Action in Brussels. In 2007 he helped direct the documentary “Palestina, la verdad asediada. Voces por la paz” (available with catalan, spanish, english and arabic subtitles). Between 2009 and 2014 he made several trips to Egypt and the occupied Palestinian territories. He has edited the monthly Journal de Notre Amérique since 2015.
Source: Investig’Action
This article is also available in : French