The Largest Minority

July 3rd, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Former congresswoman and presidential candidate for the Green Party Cynthia McKinney calls WBAIX during her second day in prison. She was kidnapped by Israel for attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. There has been no statement from the Obama Administration, which is apparently intent on making Cynthia invisible like they did during the campaign. Coverage has also been non-existent from the Western media, which recently couldn’t stop reporting about the strong arm tactics and human rights violations of the Iranian regime. Rather, what’s been dominating not only the corporate news but the blogosphere and twitter is Sarah Palin’s latest plea for attention.

June 26th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

President Rafael Correa of Ecuador is unlike career politicians in the United States. He actually sees his job as not an end in itself but as a means to accomplish social justice. Correa is also an economist who was educated in the US and has displayed his Chavez-sized balls by rejecting his nation’s national debt as illegitimate and pledging to fight creditors in international courts. Democrats, take note. This is what an actual liberal looks and sounds like.

The president of Ecuador has criticised capitalism for its role in the global financial crisis, in a speech to delegates attending a United Nations conference on the state of the world economy.

Raphael Correa also suggested on Thursday that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, two bodies within the group of so-called Bretton Woods institutions, be dismantled.

“Patching up the Bretton Woods system, which we do not control, makes no sense for [developing] countries,” Correa said on the second day of the summit at the UN General Assembly in New York.

Making changes to the IMF and World Bank “would be an insufficient stop-gap solution,” he said.

“We are faced with a crisis unlike those [previously] provoked by capitalism.”

If the Bretton Woods bodies, which were set up in the aftermath of World War II, cannot be abolished they should at least hold less power over the world’s poor countries, Correa said.

Decisions on how to manage the global economy should instead be transferred to the United Nations, he said.

The three-day UN Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis is being attended by 140 developing nations, with most of them calling for changes to be made to the global economic system.

Scores of countries attending the conference have argued that the global downturn is due to reckless economic liberalisation and de-regulation of financial systems by Western nations.

But not a single representative of a developed country is attending the summit, highlighting the divide between richer and poorer nations on how the global financial system should be managed.

“We are now dealing with the consequences of excluding the majority from the decision-making process, but it is the majority that has to pay the worst consequences and the worst price for the errors made by - I’m sorry to say it - a greedy minority,” Miguel D’Escoto, the president of the UN General Assembly, told Al Jazeera.

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June 23rd, 2009 by Guest

A universal health care system based on the single-payer model appears to be a bridge too far for President Barack Obama.

A single-payer system, such as Medicare for everyone, would provide health care for all.

President Lyndon Johnson had the courage to weigh in with all his clout to win passage of Medicare and Medicaid.

President Roosevelt put all his chips on the table to win passage of the Social Security Act that makes the elderly more secure.

All around the world, governments have long made medical care available for their citizens. Why not us?

Obama clearly has no stomach for the political battle that any single-payer plan would ignite. So he’s endorsed a step that would allow the government to provide health insurance coverage — not health care — to eligible people. Such government-sponsored health insurance is being considered in Congress as it writes health care reform legislation.

While the public plan option gets full consideration in Congress, the single-payer model has been unwelcome at the White House or on Capitol Hill.

Obama said part of the fierce opposition to health care reform has been fueled “by some interest groups and lobbyists — opposition that has used fear tactics to paint any effort to achieve reform as an attempt to, yes, socialize medicine.”

He made it clear that his idea of health care reform would allow patients to choose their own doctors and keep their own health plans.

Somehow government bailouts have been more palatable for Wall Street plutocrats who happen to be needy.

Obama stressed in a speech to the AMA in Chicago last week that he does not favor socialized medicine.

Some 47 million Americans are uninsured — many because some employers have dropped coverage in the economic downturn. Others lack insurance because pre-existing illnesses deny them access to private insurance. There also are millions with no way to pay for soaring health insurance payments because they have lost their jobs.

Nearly all Republicans and some moderate Democrats oppose any public plan option. These are the same lawmakers who receive many government-provided perks including health insurance.

In his remarks to the AMA, Obama warned against “scare tactics” and “fear mongering” by opponents of the public plan option, which the President said should be available to those who have no health insurance.

Obama rejected the “illegitimate concern that’s being put forward by those who are claiming that a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system.”

Obama should tear a page out of LBJ’s vote-getting manual and shame the heartless opponents.

The health of all Americans is our business.

source

June 16th, 2009 by Guest

originally posted at Lenin’s Tomb

I think it’s a consensus on the liberal-left in the US and UK that the Iranian elections were fixed. If they are right, we are watching a bloodless coup turn into a bloody one, as protesters have been beaten and are now being shot at and killed by cops. One of Mousavi’s supporters alleges he was told that a coup was coming. If they are not right, we are still faced with a state busily beating and killing the opposition. The Iranian state is still detaining ‘reformist’ MPs, censoring newspapers, shutting down access to social networking sites (although people are still finding ways to Twitter), and behaving as if for all the world it had every reason to act guiltily. It is not inherently implausible that Ahmadinejad got 63% of the vote, and it has to be shown that there was a fix. The fact that Ahmadinejad used state oil revenues to fund programmes for the poor can be approved or derided, but it arguably gave large numbers of people an interest in voting for Ahmadinejad against his more explicitly neoliberal rival. It gave him a base among some of the working class and bazaaris. Still, it is hardly implausible either that some vote-rigging went on, if only to make the win decisive enough to avoid a run-off.

So, the first question that occurs is, why should the ballots be rigged? This is skated over in a lot of the commentary as if the answer were obvious - Mousavi advocated reform, duh! However, Mousavi is hardly a dangerous candidate for the Iranian ruling class: rather, he represents a powerful faction of it. True, he was once on the ‘Islamic Left’ back in the 1980s, and it was due to the support of the left-leaning majles that he was made prime minister against Khomeini’s preferences. Today, however, he is a centrist allied to the ‘Modern Right’. His solutions to Iran’s problems of accumulation and development are impeccably neoliberal. This is why he got the backing of the old crook, cynic, capitalist and Iran-Contra arms dealer, Hashem Rafsanjani. He supports privatization, and wants to reform Article 44 to assist the process. He supports strong counter-inflationary policies. Of course, he would like to take a slightly less ‘hard line’ with respect to the US. Indeed, like other would-be ‘reform’ candidates, his campaign tried to channel Obama - with some success since his wife, who spearheaded some important reforms in the late 1980s, was cast as the Michelle Obama of the campaign. Still, he isn’t an outsider by any means. His candidacy wasn’t struck off, while those that offend the Council of Guardians usually are. He wasn’t excluded from the debates, as far as I can find out. He wasn’t excluded from the polls, some of which put him ahead, and some behind. Why should he have suddenly become so dangerous that the Iranian state, or powerful sectors within it, would risk a stupid fix? The answer could only be that by tapping a popular demands for reforms, the candidacy might have unleashed a movement that seriously frightened some factions in the ruling class.

The next question is, what can come of the protests? Whatever the motivations of Mousavi, we have an enormous number of people on the streets, with a clear demand for political reform. They took to those streets, reportedly ignoring warnings that the police were carrying live ammunition. This means they are brave, certainly, and also confident in their numbers. Already, Khamenei has ceded the question of investigating the elections, which it seems clear he didn’t want to do. The Iranian state may kill people, but these protesters are already starting to win. They can make gains far beyond the very limited promises that Mousavi made in order to excite progressive layers. (As far as I can tell, Mousavi was mildly critical of some state repression of television channels, and promised to ‘review’ legislation that could be harmful to women - hardly a tribune of the oppressed). So, whatever the truth about the claims of a fix, these protests can do nothing but good. They may, in addition to getting rid of some particularly onerous forms of oppression, open up a space in which the left can operate more freely, and in which the labour movement can assert itself more forcefully.

source

June 9th, 2009 by Guest

A CNN headline, reporting Obama’s plans for his June 4 Cairo address, reads “Obama looks to reach the soul of the Muslim world.” Perhaps that captures his intent, but more significant is the content hidden in the rhetorical stance, or more accurately, omitted.

Keeping just to Israel-Palestine — there was nothing substantive about anything else — Obama called on Arabs and Israelis not to ‘point fingers’ at each other or to “see this conflict only from one side or the other.” There is, however, a third side, that of the United States, which has played a decisive role in sustaining the current conflict. Obama gave no indication that its role should change or even be considered.

Those familiar with the history will rationally conclude, then, that Obama will continue in the path of unilateral U.S. rejectionism.

Obama once again praised the Arab Peace Initiative, saying only that Arabs should see it as “an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities.” How should the Obama administration see it? Obama and his advisers are surely aware that the Initiative reiterates the long-standing international consensus calling for a two-state settlement on the international (pre-June ‘67) border, perhaps with “minor and mutual modifications,” to borrow U.S. government usage before it departed sharply from world opinion in the 1970s, vetoing a Security Council resolution backed by the Arab “confrontation states” (Egypt, Iran, Syria), and tacitly by the PLO, with the same essential content as the Arab Peace Initiative except that the latter goes beyond by calling on Arab states to normalize relations with Israel in the context of this political settlement. Obama has called on the Arab states to proceed with normalization, studiously ignoring, however, the crucial political settlement that is its precondition. The Initiative cannot be a “beginning” if the U.S. continues to refuse to accept its core principles, even to acknowledge them.

In the background is the Obama administration’s goal, enunciated most clearly by Senator John Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to forge an alliance of Israel and the “moderate” Arab states against Iran. The term “moderate” has nothing to do with the character of the state, but rather signals its willingness to conform to U.S. demands.

What is Israel to do in return for Arab steps to normalize relations? The strongest position so far enunciated by the Obama administration is that Israel should conform to Phase I of the 2003 Road Map, which states: “Israel freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).” All sides claim to accept the Road Map, overlooking the fact that Israel instantly added 14 reservations that render it inoperable.

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June 1st, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Being the superpower that it is, the United States has a way of turning populist movements militant. Anything that poses a threat to US hegemony is spun as a threat to freedom which must be destroyed. Campaigns for human rights and social justice are easily turned into militant resistance campaigns in order to defend themselves against Uncle Sam and his big stick.

Nevertheless, resistance groups like Hezbollah and Hamas have managed to keep social services a central role in their party’s programs, outdoing their US-backed opponents of the March 14th bloc and Fatah Party respectively in providing both welfare and security to their people. Both Hezbollah and Hamas have constructed hospitals and schools, and run news services, orphanages, soup kitchens, libraries, and relief programs - everything Western critics say the Lebanese and Palestinian governments should be doing to raise the standard of living of their people.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah remains the only real defense the Lebanese have against Israel, and observers say they’re going to win the June 7th elections. That should be good news for anyone who really supports democracy, yet our current US administration is less than thrilled.

Despite hopes that someone with the name Barack Hussein Obama would actually have a more nuanced approach to the Muslim world, our current president has shown no better an understanding of Islamic political movements than his illiterate, flag-waving predecessor. The Bush Administration lumped all Muslims together. Legitimate political parties like Hamas and Hezbollah, which represented resistance against foreign aggression within their homelands, were considered a threat equal to borderless terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, which had no interest in politics and little support in the Muslim world. By continuing to exclude groups like Hezbollah and Hamas from the democratic process, the US government is creating all the conditions necessary to turn pragmatic political parties into militant forces.

In his most recent visit to Lebanon, Joe Biden stated that Washington was committed to meeting the needs of the Lebanese army, but that US aid was completely dependent on the outcome of the election. In other words, vote the right way or we will allow Israel to destroy you. You’d think a true beacon of democracy would support the outcome of any democratic election regardless of who the winner was.

This is exactly the same policy Washington had for the Palestinian elections in 2006 between Fatah and Hamas. When Palestinians actually voted for the party that addressed their concerns about security and social services, US and European aid was cut off and a coup was set into motion. Even now, President Obama is working with Fatah as if it’s the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people while ostracizing Hamas from talks concerning the future of Palestine.

Resistance parties address legitimate concerns that our US-backed puppets do not. Simply throwing more money their way so that they can maintain control will not lessen the tension that decades of US imperialism have built. We can either support democracy by letting go of our colonies or be destroyed in trying to maintain our hold on them. To quote JFK: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

May 27th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Any speech in which President Obama announces a change in policy follows the same basic format of denouncing Bush’s policy, taking long thoughtful pauses, then adopting Bush’s policy.

When I was campaigning for Nader, on the rare occasion that I would meet a self-described liberal calm enough to engage in a conversation with me, they would state that they were voting for Obama because they didn’t want a clone of George W. Bush (meaning John McCain) to win the White House. I would often reply that I wasn’t voting for either McCain or Obama for the very same reason. Both men were outright fascists. Of course, stating something like that would often end the conversation. What an absurd thing to say. Right?

h/t FireDogLake

May 26th, 2009 by Guest

Socialism is better than capitalism. So say 20 percent of Americans, and another 27 percent say they can’t say which is better, according to an April 9 Rasmussen poll.

There’s hope.

When you consider that virtually no newspaper, broadcaster, well-funded think tank, teacher, or anybody’s boss or commander ever said something nice about socialism, it’s remarkable that only 53 percent of us still favor rule by the moneyed class. Perhaps folks are learning how capitalism sacrifices happiness for individual gain.

As Billy Bragg exhorts us in his update of the socialist anthem “The Internationale”: “Stand up, all victims of oppression/for tyrants fear your might/Don’t cling so hard to your possessions/For you have nothing if you have no rights.”

No less a “capitalist tool” than Forbes Magazine let a red cat out of the bag with a report this month that the happiest countries tend to be Scandinavian socialist democracies. High per-capita GDP certainly plays a role in their felicity, but even social democratic New Zealand, with per-capita GDP only 64 percent of the United States’, ranks with the 10 democracies above us in the happiness index. They pay high taxes in these pinkotopias, but folks enjoy entitlements like free college, extensive elder care, and 52-week paid maternity leave.

The 2005 poll measured personal reports of enjoyment, pride in achievement and learning, being respected, among other things. Forbes suggests that such happiness derives from family, social and community networks, and a decent work-life balance, noting that the average workweek in Scandinavia is 37 hours.

Nice dream, but how do we get there? Most of these countries dumped capitalist exploitation long ago and instituted mixed economies with socialist ideals. More contemporary models are the 11 Latin America countries pursuing “Socialism in the 21st Century.” They too reject top-down Leninism for a system based on participatory democracy and solidarity.

In Ecuador, a land I have studied and worked in, a broad coalition of indigenous, environmentalists, trade unions, professional organizations, feminists, gay activists, left parties, and students laid the groundwork for transformation. They just re-elected Rafael Correa, their leftist standard-bearer, as president. They fought racism, oligarchs, oil companies, and corrupt politicians for decades.

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