Category: Uncategorized

Why Iran but Not The Saudis?

According to a New York Times article from Feb. 28th, President Biden decided the cost of directly penalizing Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), is too high, despite a United States intelligence finding that he directly approved the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident and Washington Post columnist who was drugged and dismembered in October 2018. (You can find the pdf of the report here).

Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, poignantly commented,

“More than two years after the state-sanctioned murder of Jamal Khashoggi his family still have no information about the whereabouts of his remains while high-level officials continue to escape justice, and are free to continue their brutal crackdown on peaceful dissidents.”

Khashoggi’s murder is not the first human rights violation ever committed by the Saudi’s, by far. According to Amnesty International’s “Country Profile” for Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom has recently escalated the repression of the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly. They have detained and prosecuted dozens of government critics and their families. And the authorities use the death penalty extensively, carrying out scores of executions for a range of crimes, including drug offences. According to a report by Amnesty International from 2019, Saudi Arabia’s courts even continue to engage in inhumane acts such as imposing sentences of flogging as punishment, sometimes for a thousand lashes or more. Even amputations and cross-amputations occur (where the opposite hand and foot are removed, e.g., right hand/left foot), which invariably constitute torture.

And this does not even begin to list the crimes against women that take place there. I’ve never seen such celebration in the “Free World” for something as basic as the right for a person to drive a car.

I list such horrid things today for one reason: I am pointing out how the United States government lectures the world on how Iranians commit human rights abuses while such terrible things go on in our closest ally in the region, MBS’s Saudi Arabia.

I am the last to admit that Iran is the land of freedom and democracy we claim to be here in the West. The special United Nations investigator of human rights in Iran presented a highly critical report in 2015 that describes a record rate of executions, a deeply flawed judiciary, and repression of journalists, dissidents, women and freedom of expression there. But that’s no evening news top story here in America. We have been force-fed that for decades.

Yet look what happens when Saudi Arabia under MBS commits such a heinous crime as murdering, dismembering and torturing a U.S. resident who merely criticized their regime. There is a tremendous double standard here.

And this most certainly has not just begun. According to this op-ed in the NYT from 2017, describing an address that Nikki Haley delivered to the U.N. about human rights abuses, revolves around the grossly pragmatic actions of the tiptoeing around dictators and tyrants Trump exercised during his disgraceful four years in power. And we all know these criticisms of Iran began the first days of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, when the Persian nation dared to defy world powers and take some amount of self-determination back from their colonizers. The installation of the Shah regime was the real crime there.

I know that there is a lot of criticism over the last five years or so of the Right’s “what-about-ism,” and I understand. I have seen Tucker Carlson on FOX News. But there is a thin line between “what-about-ism” and the pointing out of ridiculous levels of hypocrisy. The United States is in the latter, not the former on this one .

Riot Porn from Sparking The Left!

Since I don’t have a real post for this Sunday (there is a post below from today), check out some of this “best of…” riot porn from over at Riot-Porn-Aesthetics over on Tumblr. I’ll be posting more occasionally. ACAB!!!

The Week of 02/21/2021 with STL

Greetings Comrades,

Due to personal reasons I have to miss posting anything substantial this week. But I would like to make a few observations before you go:

  • For the next four years, Pres. Biden will not take up the minimum wage increase issue again. There are ways around the parliamentarian’s decision and yet the Dems do nothing. When Biden included the measure with the COVID-19 relief bill he knew it wouldn’t go through. He was just trying to deceive all of the progressives who came out to vote for him back in November 2020. And you know the GOP will do anything to pass their legislation. Why can’t the Democrats do the same on such a vital issue? Because our government does not care about us.
  • I’ve been watching the CPAC conference this Saturday and the Trump-ist con-job is still on. Trump’s followers are speaking mistruth after mistruth in an effort to reach out to the non-college educated, blue-collar voter. And if you look at the numbers, it’s working. Watch some yourself over at C-SPAN and “know your enemy.”
  • See Judas and The Black Messiah. I do not know if you will like the movie as an entertaining, Hollywood film, but it’s a good beginner’s look into the life of Fred Hampton and his demise. It’s in theatres now and it will be on HBO Max until Sunday, March 14. You can follow up with this great documentary, The Murder of Fred Hampton from 1971. The quality is not great but it’s not about the cinematography.

5 New STL Propaganda Images!

Good Morning, Comrades!

If you like our STL Image Gallery check out our Sparking The Left blog over at Tumblr. I’m posting a ton of great pics and memes from other cool blogs. Check it out!

Also go follow us on Twitter.com at @LeftSparking. I’m keeping up during the week with retweets, comments, etc., and we need some followers. Go follow!

Lastly, here’s the link to the updated STL gallery!

See ya Sunday!

A New U.S. Constitution?

On Sunday October 25th, 2020, the Chilean people voted to rewrite the nation’s constitution. The plebiscite was a landslide victory for change: 78.24% voted for, and 21.76% against. A special convention will be formed with newly elected members, and the rewrite will be submitted to the people in 2022.

Why did Chile vote to rewrite their constitution? According to the New York Times, Chile is being wrecked by crises in both income inequality and a decaying public service system. And these have been the base reasons for unrest in the South American country since October 2019. Chile has many natural resources, but they are being exploited by billionaire capitalists from both within and without, as always happens in a free-market economy.

Chile has been a very stable nation compared to its neighbors for decades. Why? Mainly due to the overthrow of a duly elected Marxist president in 1970.

Socialist Salvador Allende was the first radical-Leftist to be elected president of a Latin American liberal democracy in 1970. And for the usual reasons, fascist military leaders, with much help from the United States government, conducted a coup d’etat that overthrew him. He was then replaced by Gen. Augusto Pinochet and he was a brutal, brutal dictator. The fascist leader committed various human rights abuses during his tenure, including forced disappearances, murder, and torture of political opponents. A government commission report that included testimony from more than 30,000 people, Pinochet’s government killed at least 3,197 people and tortured about 29,000. Two-thirds of the cases listed in the report happened in 1973.[112] He reigned for 17 years.

In 1980, ten years before his removal from power, a constitution was written and approved by fair election in Chile by a special government commission. The Chilean people will have been living under that same constitution from 1980 to 2022. It is one of the last relics of a very dark chapter in Latin American history.

With the victory by the people, current Chilean Pres. Pinera stated, from the NYT,

“This plebiscite is not the end; it is the beginning of a path we should all undertake together,” President Sebastián Piñera said in an address from the presidential palace.

“Until now, the Constitution has divided us,” he added. “As of today, we should all cooperate to make the new Constitution become one home for all of us.”

Chile, night of 10/25/2020 after election victory for the people’s rewrite of the constitution.

Why do I choose this event for this week’s post? First and foremost, it is wonderful for the Chilean people for they now have a chance to enact some much needed far-Leftist reforms benefitting their entire nation, not just the rich and powerful. Second, it made me contemplate how the American people and our current governmental system is so tied to the U.S. Constitution, and maybe it’s time for a change.

The Constitution of the United States was enacted in 1789, over 225 years ago. And who wrote it? The most bourgeois, of the bourgeois of the 18th century New World. There is no way to express how “elite” these men were with their money, extensive educations, and even with the human beings many owned. Yet they are still consider near gods ruling over the pantheon of American history. The “Founding-Framers (Fathers)” are worshipped by the masses due to centuries of 1% rule.

When you look at who these men were, who do you think they wrote the Constitution for? For themselves and others of their status.

This is painfully obvious when one looks at it the right way. The United States is not built on freedom and equality for all. It is born out of the oppression by a select few who made up all the rules at the conception of the country. They wrote the Constitution so only the white, landowning, males of this nation could vote. It is so obvious. And despite how many amendments have been added to the document, it is still just advances upper-class rule. Those in power twist and contort words and clauses to justify their rule over us men and women below. The rich calling themselves liberal, or progressive, still look to this aged document to justify their superiority over us.

My question is why do we still have our lives in lockstep with the most elitist men in U.S. history? It is written for upper-class rule, not for the benefit of the people. Yet the people look to it as near scripture due to a massive system of coercion. Everything is evaluated beside the Constitution of the United States. So maybe we should break free.

The American people are in no way prepared for far-left ideologies at the moment. So instead of speaking about violent revolutions and “dictatorships of the proletariat,” we should right now frame change into a mere rewrite of the U.S. Constitution. To this day everyone still has a bitter taste in their mouth regarding Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism due to Cold War propaganda. But if we can reframe the progression to a far-Left government through the rewriting of our founding document, it may work sooner. We won’t have to metaphorically burn down everything like the Bolsheviks did. And this is not reformism or liberalism. This nation, for decades, if not centuries, will not be satisfied without a Constitutional democratic government. So let’s just change the Constitution. We can write it as we want with lines concerning the abolition of capitalism and true equality among all peoples.

In conclusion, American society, just like any other, is not bound to the Constitution of the United States through some divine order. Just like Chile, we can rewrite a new binding document. Another social contract. This country worships the Constitution and we look to it to answer every question. So let us think about just abolishing the current Constitution in order to construct and implement one that is written for the many, not they few. The one we have now was written by and for the 1%; not the 99%. Let’s just consider this strategy and maybe we will find a more palatable way into American’s hearts.

It’s a Crime for a $7.25 Minimum Wage to Exist

Sparking The Left is a serious advocate for the minimum wage increase to $15 an hour. (It should have been to $25 an hour 20 years ago, honestly). Just check out this great tweet by Sen Bernie Sanders we put on the STL twitter feed:

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report released on Mon. 2/8/2021, a minimum wage increase to $15 an hour would boost the wages of the 17 million workers who make less than that now. And another 10 million workers otherwise earning slightly more than $15 per hour might see their wages rise as well. The number of people with annual income below the poverty threshold in 2025 would fall by 1.3 million.

In all fairness, the CBO report also predicted that the increase could be up to 1.3 million jobs lost between the six increases ending in 2025. But a phase-in of a $15 minimum wage would also lift some 900,000 out of poverty. The report also states that there are two points of uncertainty it does not take into account in their final numbers, namely, wage growth or the responsiveness of employment to a wage increase, i.e., how will rich pigs handle these new costs in terms of layoffs, benefits reduction, etc. So these two points show the CBO is not saying their conclusions are scripture.

According to a report done by John Schmitt at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, (Schmitt, 2013), a review of all major academic economic research from the early 1990’s to 2013 on minimum wage increases, minimum wage rates have little or no discernible effect on the employment prospects of low-wage workers. According to Schmitt 2013,

“;;;[T]he weight of the empirical evidence is either inconclusive (statistically insignificant or positive in some cases and negative in others) or suggestive of only small economic effects [pg. 22]

So I am distraught at how this lifeline to the working class, a part of the Biden’s Covid-19 relief bill, may be cut out due to some GOP congressional procedural shenanigans or by one or two Democratic cowards. This is totally unacceptable to the people.

The federal minimum wage being so low is one of the biggest crimes against the people in this country behind our astronomical healthcare costs. And the above cited sources show how many people could be saved by a small hike. The wage has not even increased since 2009. That’s 12 years now. A living wage to everyone, worker or not, should already be considered a human right globally. We cannot even get that for the millions of Americans who work 40 hours a week in the richest nation in history. Low-wage workers cannot stay above the poverty line at $7.25 hr., yet those like Jeff Bezos, who just retired from Amazon with $184.6 billion dollars, could never spend all the money they hoard. And according to the New York Times, Pres. Biden just met with the leaders of major corporations like Wal-Mart, Gap Inc., and JP Morgan Chase, where he probably begged at their feet for help because he promised voters a living-wage (which many experts qualify as $17.50 hr). He has already broken his word in how we will not be getting a full $2000 stimulus check from this worthless government.

This situation and the above cited facts point to one major point that is not new here at STL: We are screaming to the people, “The system does not work for you! Let’s do something about it!” This country’s power structure is simply here to perpetuate the domination of the 1%. And we have to do something about that.

Twitter Feed Activity Returns!

Hey Comrades, Friends, Sisters and Brothers,

I am keeping up with our STL Twitter feed again at @LeftSparking. You can see some of the most recent posts below, or you can simply follow us on the Twitter app to receive tweets and retweets from STL during the week. Check it out!

C’mon, Noam, Worse Than Hitler?!

The most respected modern far-leftist intellectual is Noam Chomsky. Chomsky is Institute Professor (emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Laureate Professor of Linguistics and Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in the Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona. He is also a historian, a social critic, and an activist, amongst many other important things. Chomsky completely rearranged my world view with a collection of his transcripts compiled from several of his talks entitled Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky . And I once felt that I could rely on him for infallible guidance as a radical leftist thinker. But I just recently found an interview Chomsky did with Canada’s National Observer published June 15th, 2020 that features a zoom call interview where he is described as proclaiming,

Voting for U.S. President Donald Trump is worse than voting for Hitler, Chomsky affirmed to interviewer Linda Solomon Wood, during a Canada’s National Observer-sponsored webinar in April. “Hitler was maybe the worst criminal in human history.” He wanted to murder millions of Jews, Slavs, Roma, homosexuals, others. “But what does Trump want to do? He wants to destroy the prospects for organized human life.”

Chomsky then explains that Trump is doing this horrible thing by destroying the environment with his policies, and that is what makes him worse than Hitler. (Check from minutes 9:32 to 14:00)

How can anyone possibly think that anyone in our modern age, much less former Pres. Donald J. Trump, rivalled Hitler’s criminality? That is the most insane argument I have ever heard. Yes, Trump will probably go down in history as the worst president the U.S. has ever had. And, yes, he tried to overturn Obamacare, gave huge tax cuts to corporations, and ripped kids from their parent’s arms and put them in cages. But Hitler? The Holocaust? The 25 million dead Russians? The destruction of Europe???

Chomsky then goes on to try and support his absurd claim by laying out an historical anecdote where he describes a document by the Nazi regime that was found. It read that even the Germans knew they had to stop the emission of greenhouse gases to protect the planet from overheating. And that is shocking. But worse than Hitler???

Sorry, Noam, Trump and the GOP do not want to intentionally destroy the entire system of organized life. They just have their heads completely in the sand about the global climate crisis due to business interests. The GOP takes three tracks in their thinking on the enviroment, either, A. climate change is not real, or, B. it is not a result of manmade greenhouse gas emissions, or, C. technology will provide us with a solution to the problem once the situation gets what they consider as out of hand. This is simple ignorance and a complete disregard for people’s lives in the interest of wealthy donors. And I am not absolving them from blame for future catastrophes. But it is not the killing of millions in an attempt to lord over the entirety of Europe!

Let it be said that even as enthusiastic radical leftists we cannot fall into the same trap Chomsky has. Sometimes we need to tone down the rhetoric, if you can believe I am saying that. Lenin and the other Bolsheviks were as radical as they come, yet they maintained reality. If not, they never would have kept the Revolution alive. And Marxism is a theoretical framework we believe in, and over-exaggerating does nothing to further the mechanics of it. Nor does it help the movement. Do you think most proletarians would think Chomsky is a complete kook if they heard the above claim? I am sure they would.

Visual Propaganda Day at STL!

Just added five more images over at the STL Image gallery. Use them well!

Here ya go!

New Propaganda and a Little Observation on the Week

I was unable to put anything together for this week’s post due to time constraints, but I did put up five new images in the STL gallery. I do have four quick points on the week’s news below, though. Be back with a full post next week:

  • Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene must be expelled from Congress. This is so painfully obvious I cannot believe I have to advocate for this. There is right and wrong here, people. Stop making excuses for the fascist supporters of these wicked people. We have to draw a line.
  • If you have some extra funds to lose, download the Robinhood app and invest in GameStop, Blackberry, or another short-squeezed stock to try and stick it to the oligarchs on Wall Street. Just remember, those stocks will come crashing down to their “real” value sometime soon. So make sure not to be left holding the bag, or don’t use any resources you can’t afford to lose.
  • This is getting very old: the Right must stop equating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol to Black Lives Matter protests. One was an attempt to overturn a democratic election (though bourgeois) while the other is resistance against people being murdered in the streets and in their beds by agents of repression. No comparison.
  • Facebook is using the excuse that they should be able to take down leftist groups and pages just because they’re trying to get rid of right-wing extremists and Q-anon believers. This goes to the above point in that we are not the same. We are not just differing sides of a “conversation.” There IS right and wrong here.

Thanks for visiting!