Exposing the Myth of Capitalist Democracy

Lifting the Veil: Barack Obama and the Failure of Capitalist Democracy

Scott Noble (2013)

Film Review

Lifting the Veil is a well-crafted expose of the myth of so-called capitalist democracy Based on interviews and archival footage of Senator Bernie Sanders, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, George Carlin, Glen Ford, Harold Pinkley, John Pilger, Richard Wolfe, William I. Robinson, Bill Moyers and other prominent dissidents, it makes an ironclad case that democracy is impossible under a capitalist economic system.

Using Obama’s extensive list of broken campaign promises as a starting point, Noble convincingly demonstrates how Wall Street corporations have seized absolute control over all America’s so-called democratic institutions. In addition to highlighting the essential role team Obama played in crippling a large, highly vocal antiwar movement, he presents historical examples to reveal how this has been the traditional role of the Democratic Party in the US – to co-opt social movements that threaten the status quo.

The first half of the film focuses on Obama’s 2008 campaign and his long list of promises to reverse specific abuses of George W Bush’s government. In a series of archival clips, we see Obama promising to

• Restore habeas corpus
• Close Guantanamo
• End government secrecy
• End wireless surveillance
• Stop foreclosures instead of enriching bank CEOS
• Expose corporate backers of tax and corporate welfare legislation
• End torture
• End extraordinary rendition*
• Withdraw from Iraq in 2009 and Afghanistan in 2011
• Pass banking regulation to prevent a new Wall Street collapse

Besides breaking every single one of these promises, Obama enacted new policies that were even more oppressive and pro-corporate than Bush’s. Among them were an indefinite detention provision in the NDAA, an executive order giving himself power to assassinate American citizens, the new war in Pakistan and Libya and $7 billion in loans guarantees for the moribund nuclear industry.

The film makes the point that the 2008 election was merely a PR exercise in marketing Brand Obama and had absolutely nothing to do with the candidate’s political agenda.

My favorite segments were those in which comedian George Carlin explains to audiences how powerful corporations sucker them into believing they live in a democracy.

The film ends on an optimistic note with a sampling of opinion polls indicating that more than 60% of Americans oppose the pro-corporate agenda Obama has foisted on them: 63% of Americans would pay higher taxes to guarantee health care for everyone, 70% oppose nuclear power, 81% want to reduce the deficit by taxing the rich and cutting the military budget and only 3% support cutting Social Security.

The only criticism I would have of Lifting the Veil is that it fails to offer specific solutions for Americans seeking to get their democracy back. The dissidents featured are pretty much unanimous that Americans need to stop looking to electoral politics as a way to reform either government or the economic system. However they are a little vague on what activists should do other than protesting and engaging in civil disobedience. Neither is likely to accomplish significant change without serious organizing and movement building to develop alternatives to the current system of government.

Given a lot of this movement building is already occurring in Spain, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Iceland, Mexico and South America and it would have been great to see examples of what this looks like.

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*Extraordinary rendition is the kidnapping and transfer of a detainee to the custody of a foreign government for purposes of detention, interrogation and torture.

Drone Nation

Part 5 of Counter-intelligence: Shining a Light on Black Operations

The final episode of Counter-intelligence is dedicated to drone technology and Barack Obama’s virtual repeal of the Fifth Amendment. The Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” Obama’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) allows the government to detain individuals indefinitely without charge, trial or conviction. Obama has also granted himself the authority, via executive order, to arbitrarily execute civilians (including American citizens) without due process, evidence or accountability to Congress or the courts. Both overturn hundreds of years of common law preventing the rich and powerful from using government to attack their personal enemies.

Filmmaker Scott Noble reminds us that Obama deliberately leaked details of his weekly White House “kill list” meetings. Individuals are added to the kill lists, which are maintained by the CIA and a covert unit of the U.S. military called the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)*, following “determinations” that secret criteria are satisfied. Noble maintains the primary purpose of the leaks of the leak was to terrorize Americans into submission.

Death by Drone

Thus far, the only presidential assassinations we know of have been carried out by drones. “Drone Nation” highlights the cold impersonality of a technology that’s conveniently similar to video games teenager males are raised on. Thus it comes as no surprise that drone victims are dehumanized (they’re called “bug splats”) in the eyes of young drone operators who sit behind consoles thousands of miles away.

Nor that drone strikes typically target random groups of people, such as wedding parties. Drone technology has no capability of distinguishing between civilians and combatants. 98.5% of all the people killed by CIA drones are civilians – only 1.5% are so-called “high value targets.”

Insect-sized Drones

Even more frightening are the millions of dollars the Pentagon is shelling out for killer robot research, including hummingbird and insect sized drones that require no human operator.

By 2020 tens of thousands of drones will be flying in US skies.

The series ends with a moving tribute to all the whistleblowers who made the documentary Counter-intelligence possible.

*JSOC is covered in Part 1 of Counter-intelligence.

 

Counter-intelligence: Shining a Light on Black Operations

Scott Noble
Metanoia Films (2013)

 

photo credit: codepinkphoenix via photopin cc

 

Also posted at  Veterans Today

An NSA-approved Guide to Revolution

Activists who advocate for violent revolution don’t advertise their views on the Internet for obvious reasons. That being said, Storm Clouds Gathering treads a really fine line with their recent. Revolution: An Instruction Manual. They don’t exactly advocate using violence to dismantle corporate fascism. But they don’t really condemn it, either. Instead they argue from perspective that revolutions are mainly won by psychological means and it makes most sense to attack the state where they are weakest.

The filmmakers are totally non-ideological in their approach to dismantling capitalism. In fact, they begin with the assertion that any revolution with a an inflexible pre-ordained view of the desired outcome is doomed to failure.

They then share a general overview of their own vision – a loose confederation of self-governing communities similar to the Iroquois Federation. This was the model for the Articles of Confederation, which was the founding document of the United States of America before the bankers and mercantalists used the Constitution to strip the 13 original states of their power.

Audience Participation Required

The film is interactive and requires audience participation. In fact, it stops at 1:47 minutes until the viewer answers “yes” or “no” whether they believe the system can be reformed. If they click “yes” the video ends. I clicked “no.”

The strategy the filmmakers lay out for dismantling the corporate state involves removing, one by one, what they identify as the three “pillars of power”:

1. Control of the “public mind,” as it concerns patriotism and nationalistic beliefs, such as freedom, democracy and terrorism.
2. Control of money and finance through money creation, taxation and inflation.
3. A state monopoly on violence to compel obedience through fear.

How They Got Past the NSA Censors

The film finishes quite abruptly by recommending people read three books on revolution, including Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy. This was an extremely wise choice, as this is the training manual the State Department and CIA-linked foundations widely distributed to activists engaged in the “color” revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Arab Spring.

I have written at length about the CIA role in financing the nonviolent movement, as well as nonviolent guru Gene Sharp’s historic links with the Pentagon, State Department, and US intelligence.

Thierry Meysson, editor of Voltaire Net, was the first to go public (in 2005) with Sharp’s longstanding links to the military-intelligence complex.* The only weakness of Meysson’s original article is his failure to cite his references. I researched the sources and confirmed each of his original assertions for a 2012 Daily Censored article entitled The CIA and Nonviolent Resistance.

Also see How the CIA Promotes Nonviolence, The CIA Role in the Arab Spring and How Nonviolence Protects the State

*In 2002, Meysson’s The Big Lie was also the first to expose US intelligence involvement in 9-11.