James Petras

Discussion in 'Politics' started by sculptor, Sep 8, 2017.

  1. sculptor Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,466
    <------------- is curious about your thoughts on eurasiareview and this linked and partially posted op ed

    see:
    http://www.eurasiareview.com/07092017-who-rules-america-the-power-elite-in-the-time-of-trump-oped/

    ................
    It seems that Trump is allowing the power elite to strip himself of his most trusted allies.
    Perhaps, loosing Keith Schiller leaves Trump dangerously vulnerable in a whole new way.
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2017
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. exchemist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    12,451
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. sculptor Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,466
    New to me also:
    Ergo this post.
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Eurasia Review seems a sketchy aggregator relying on a few columns by editors who don't seem to have much outside reputation, and a bunch of articles apparently harvested from elsewhere; to wit, the author, Dr. Petras, does not include ER on the list of publications he contributes to, which does include Counterpunch, Information Clearing House, and others. It seems unlikely this relatively unknown publication is shelling out for major think tanks around the world. It is strangely insular.

    The editor is named Robert Steven Duncan, described as a "widely published" journalist, columnist, and PR consultant; running his name through Google brings Eurasia Review links, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Eurasia Hoy. And then the obituary of someone else. For a PR and "new media" consultant, Mr. Duncan has created a very small internet footprint for himself.

    Everything about the journal kind of ... I mean ... it all kind of stinks. Even the article. That Dr. Petras is some manner of leftist is interesting; he's also the bane of the left, a really smart guy who just can't stop talking shit about Jews. That he turns up grinding a "toothless" and "thoroughly defeated" President Trump about a "grotesque rout" and the "embrace" of "neoliberal Zionists" and "Congressional global militarists", all while managing to work in what reads like a complaint about the media harassing the president about Russia.

    Diveristy is one thing, but this is weird; the editorial curation will be the key to understanding what Eurasia Review does, and while it may not necessarily qualify as "fake news", it's "fake" something.
    ___________________

    Notes:

    Petras, James. "Who Rules America? The Power Elite In The Time Of Trump". Eurasia Review. 7 September 2017. EurasiaReview.com. 8 September 2017. http://bit.ly/2xc2lA5



    (Edit: Clarifying cited language, add works cited (notes); 8 September 2017, 14.11 PDT)
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2017
  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Here's another page from that site: http://www.eurasiareview.com/category/environment/

    But returning to the article at hand:
    The idea that any of these supposed "sectors" have somehow recently "emerged" under Trump is frankly ridiculous. There is no rock to have lived one's life under heavy enough to justify that description.

    Meanwhile: This article (the site as a whole is not as easily pigeonholed) reads as an attempt to defend and rehabilitate Bannon's political influence, to retrofit him and the Trump campaign with a coherent and defensible ideology, and along the way to separate Trump's failings from the fascist core of the Republican Party. The name given to this supposed "sector" and its ideology is "economic nationalist", and no bad adjectives (such as "rabid" or "Jew") are attached to anyone in it (of the royal family Kushner is not in it, for example, only original Trump when under Bannon's influence, and possibly Donny (Ivanka?).

    That is my prediction for the eventually visible overall strategy behind the funding of this kind of bs, not specifically from contributors to the Eurasian Review (which is privately funded by unnamed people) but from multiple directions (including the mainstream media, bet) - the Republican Party, which is to say the American fascist "sector" this Petras guy seems to have overlooked, needs distance from the incoming consequences of Trump. The story they don't want told is Republican fascist demagogue turns out to be bigmouthed corrupt fuckup, yet again, like before.

    And that's kind of too bad. If this source (meaning however Petras got his stuff on this site) were not committed to laundering Bannon et al, its valid critiques of other bad actors might untwist and become reliable. But then who would give it money?
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2017
  9. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Petras' discourse seems intended to polarize the left for some manner of wheat and chaff in order to plan the Revolution, as such. That is to say, it's a sermon for some Churchillian-rolled post-Trotskyist post-Revolutionary choir. There is a part of me that wants to take the time to read through his anti-Zionist view that make Israel's point by ranging into the nakedly anti-Semitic in order to see what degree he's sparing premillennial dispensationalism in order to keep driving nails into Jews, but ... (sigh) ... do I hafta?

    At the same time, I'm keeping half an eye toward the tributary streams lending to the internationalist antisocial nationalism that, when we take a moment or three to situate #DonnySmalls in his proper station amid Puti-Toots' puppet theatre, would find common institutional concern in Europe posturing the Russian strongman as figurehead idol.
     
  10. sculptor Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,466
    Now that you've read the article and linked:
    What would you keep and what would you throw away?
     
  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    I'd recognize the attempted separation of Trump - and Bannon - from the Republican Party, and call it out.

    The iceberg suicide crew needs to go down with the ship, this time.
     
  12. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Throwin' It All Away

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    Click to throw it all away.

    The article is such that nothing in it should be kept. Whatever ideas one might see which seem worth keeping are inherently tainted by the dangerous ideas we would seek to avoid; those harmful aspects are intrinsic values within the formulation of the article as it comes to us. That is to say—

    ▸ [event] → [description] → [meaning of description]
    ▸ ........................↳ [interpretation of description]

    —while there are times when the idea that someone has previously expressed such that others accuse anti-Semitism might be irrelevant to an analysis, one who includes conspiratorial language in verging up against the line in discourse to which Jews, Judaism, and conspiracism appear directly relevant presents a more affecting context.

    A political juxtaposition might illustrate: In my leftward range, there are two primary meanings of the word "Zionism". There are many who insist the term refers to ethnic-religious supremacism and describes the philosophy asserting to justify systematic human rights abuses committed by the Israeli government at home and abroad. Israelis, of course, disdain this definition, and even the UN tends regards anti-Zionism as synonymous with anti-Semitism. This is one of the crossroads at which I think it is important to remember that neither is Israel the whole of Judaism nor Judaism the whole of Israel; our purposes, however, allow us to simply note such controversies exist and then move on.

    Because here is the problem: 9/11 conspiracism being what it is, the state of his outlook on "the question of the relationships between the Arab terrorists and the Israeli secret police" includes the 2002↱ assessment that, "The lack of any public statement concerning Israel's possible knowledge of 9/11 is indicative of the vast, ubiquitous and aggressive nature of its powerful diaspora supporters". And there are days when this would matter none, but when the question is "Who Rules America?"↱ and the argument opens with seven paragraphs listing and complaining about Jews, and frames the Bannon faction, including Sebastian Gorka, as targets of an "ascendant neoliberal Zionist" faction, it might be important to explore the question of what Zionism means. Interestingly, Petras raises an issue of the "Business Power Elite", by which he means the elite within the business of energy provision, such as Secretary of State Tillerson and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, but, strangely, says nothing about Zionism in the two brief paragraphs that conclude, "Trump's business elite, which has no link to the economic nationalists in the Trump regime, provides a friendlier face to overseas economic allies and adversaries".

    And that's really important: Nary a word about premillennial dispensationalism, which is the reason we find hardline support for Israel in many evangelical sectors. Bill Maher's punch line summary offered to Larry King and his Real Time audience alike, and probably in a book here and there, and probably in Vegas a few times ... oh, right ... anyway, the punch line summary is that these Christians need the Jews to hold Jerusalem in order for Jesus to return and destroy them. And the thing is, the joke isn't that far off. That is to say, within this framework, only the biblical Jewish icons, such as Moses and David and such, will be saved.

    It seems curious that one of Dr. Petras' achievement would be somehow unaware of the phenomenon, but the words do not seem to appear in his longstanding blog. Or, you know, so says his search engine. We cannot account for the "Israel-First" influence, as Petras describes his list of Jews, without noting its extraordinary backing from American Christianist factions.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    via New York University (n.d.)

    The omission is significant because part of what we must figure, in consideration of keeping and throwing away, is this spectre of anti-Semitism, and by leaving this part out, a certain share of blame is remanded by default unto Jews.

    The meaning of the description, as such, seems permeated with an element that really does look like antisemitism; the problem with relying on the fact of an interpretive process is the combination of affirmative appearance and lack of directly rebutting evidence. Circumstantially, we have a prestigious liberal arts university in New York, as well as a Canadian university of excellent reputation, who are willing to count him among faculty (emeritus and adjunct, respectively).

    The safest thing to do is set aside the whole of the article; its analytical elements are fundamentally permeated with this unwieldy, at best, assertion of Zionism, and thus are its narrative elements subordinated.

    The narrative of how President Trump's magapolitik is undermined, subverted, betrayed, or stolen by proximal political elements and actors will, ultimatetly, tread somewhere into powerful interests fighting about foreign policy, but Petras' framework involving Zionist cabals is utterly untenable.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Petras, James. "Israel and the U.S.: A unique relationship". The James Petras Website. 23 January 2002. Petras.Lahaine.org. 10 September 2017. http://bit.ly/2eNXJFO

    —————. "Who Rules America? The Power Elite In The Time Of Trump – OpEd". Eurasia Review. 7 September 2017. EurasiaReview.com. 10 September 2017. http://bit.ly/2xc2lA5
     

Share This Page