{"id":11956,"date":"2015-09-07T08:10:16","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T13:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11956"},"modified":"2015-09-07T08:10:16","modified_gmt":"2015-09-07T13:10:16","slug":"the-real-enemy-is-within","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11956","title":{"rendered":"The Real Enemy Is Within"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"article_main_image\">\n<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/report\/item\/the_real_enemy_is_within_20150906\" target=\"_blank\">The Real Enemy Is Within<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/images\/eartothegrounduploads\/hedgesrealenemy_590.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"590\" height=\"392\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"article_main_imagecaptionsimple\" align=\"right\"><small>Steve Mann \/\u00a0<a title=\"Shutterstock\" href=\"http:\/\/www.shutterstock.com\/pic-153064595\/stock-photo-abstract-close-up-of-a-militaty-tank-in-camouflaged-colors.html?src=N2dvvxjJSsTuErXXYSNbAA-1-4\" target=\"_blank\">Shutterstock<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>If you are not dedicated to the destruction of empire and the dismantling of American militarism, then you cannot count yourself as a member of the left. It is not a side issue. It is\u00a0<i>the<\/i>\u00a0issue. It is why I refuse to give a pass in this presidential election campaign to Bernie Sanders, who refuses to confront the war industry or the crimes of empire, including U.S. support for the slow genocide carried out by Israel against the Palestinians. There will be no genuine democratic, social, economic or political reform until we destroy our permanent war machine.<\/p>\n<p>Militarists and war profiteers are our greatest enemy. They use fear, bolstered by racism, as a tool in their efforts to abolish civil liberties, crush dissent and ultimately extinguish democracy. To produce weapons and finance military expansion, they ruin the domestic economy by diverting resources, scientific and technical expertise and a disproportionate share of government funds. They use the military to carry out futile, decades-long wars to enrich corporations such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. War is a business. And when the generals retire, guess where they go to work? Profits swell. War never stops. Whole sections of the earth live in terror. And our nation is disemboweled and left to live under what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/report\/item\/the_imperative_of_revolt_20141019\">\u201cinverted totalitarianism.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Libertarians seem to get this. It is time the left woke up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBourgeois society faces a dilemma,\u201d socialist Rosa Luxemburg writes, \u201ceither a transition to Socialism, or a return to barbarism &#8230; we face the choice: either the victory of imperialism and the decline of all culture, as in ancient Rome\u2014annihilation, devastation, degeneration, a yawning graveyard; or the victory of Socialism\u2014the victory of the international working class consciously assaulting imperialism and its method: war. This is the dilemma of world history, either-or; the die will be cast by the class-conscious proletariat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Real Enemy Is Within Steve Mann \/\u00a0Shutterstock If you are not dedicated to the destruction of empire and the dismantling of American militarism, then you cannot count yourself as a member of the left. It is not a side issue. It is\u00a0the\u00a0issue. It is why I refuse to give a pass in this presidential [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[8775,8778,259,524,8777,6582,1024,2799,1213,8738,8776],"class_list":["post-11956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-survival-2","tag-chris-hedge","tag-cultural-decline","tag-empire","tag-militarism","tag-permanent-war-machine","tag-reform","tag-rome","tag-socialism","tag-totalitarianism","tag-truthdig","tag-us-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11957,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11956\/revisions\/11957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}