Time To Stop The Hypocrisy on Iran

What Is NOT Being
Discussed In The
Iran Nuclear Story

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
BlackCommentator.com

Last week’s announcement of the discovery of a previously unknown but suspected nuclear research and production site became a major story in the Western media. The Obama administration, along with its allies in Europe, saw this as evidence of Iranian duplicity on the matter of its nuclear intentions. Though Iran admitted the existence of this facility, the manner in which it did so seemed to be directed at heading off the expose' from other sources.

The outrage that was expressed concerning Iran’s revelation is, at best, overstated. While no one has been able to prove that Iran’s nuclear program is anything other than what it has claimed that it is—peaceful—the assertion from most of the mainstream Western press is that it is military in intent. This, by the way, despite the 2007 intelligence report indicating that Iran dropped its military nuclear program some years ago.

The outrage against Iran is also hypocritical. While the focus of the mainstream Western media has been on Iran’s alleged intent toward a weaponized program, in another part of the Middle, East Israel appears to possess somewhere between 100-200 nuclear weapons. No one is actually quite sure precisely because (1)Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and (2)Israel refuses to confirm or deny its nuclear program.


So, as pointed out by many observers, the real nuclear issue in the Middle East is not Iran’s nuclear intent but none other than Israel’s actual possession of such weaponry. Israel not only possesses such weapons but also possesses delivery systems for these weapons. Yet, mainstream political and media personnel in the West refuse to discuss this. In a noted exchange between iconic White House reporter Helen Thomas and the then newly elected President Obama, the President refused to answer Thomas’s questions regarding Israel’s nuclear program. He did a dance around the question that would have made Fred Astaire proud.

Idiotic and anti-Jewish remarks by Iranian President Ahmedinejad have been seized upon in order to focus the world’s attention on Iran’s nuclear intent. The fact that President Ahmedinejad often seems out of touch with reality and is cavalier in his concerns and remarks is disquieting. Yet none of that speaks to the actual power structure in Iran and what Iran intends to do with its nuclear program. While Israel used its nuclear program to support apartheid South Africa, nothing of the sort can be placed at the doorstep of Iran. Iran occupies no one’s territories, while Israel occupies Palestinian territories. While Iran has been very cagey with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Israel has completely ignored any and all international inquiries into its nuclear intent.

Once again Israel is excused by mainstream Western opinion for what it does because it is all justified in the name of protecting Israel, and by implication, Jews who were the victims of the Holocaust. While Iran’s Ahmedinejad may attempt to deny or explain away the Holocaust, most sane individuals on this planet not only acknowledge it but have seen it as an indictment of Western so-called civilization and Western barbarism previously directed at the colonial world brought home to Europe.

Yet the Holocaust does not justify the possession of nuclear weapons any more than the fact that US overthrew one Iranian government (Mossadegh in 1953); supported a criminal dictatorship (the Shah); and attempted to overthrow the newly formed Islamic Republic through support for Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980, would justify an Iranian nuclear program today. Yes, the Iranians have every reason to be suspicious of US intent toward their country and their region. They additionally have every right to seek respect from Western nations, particularly after a history of abuse experienced at the hands of Western countries.

The focus on Iranian nuclear intent, however, seems completely over the top in terms of scale and possibilities. A real and scary nuclear standoff exists between India and Pakistan yet there is anything but an aggressive approach towards this situation by the USA. India, which, along with Israel, is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has had a blind-eye turned toward it as its nuclear program went forward as did, by the way, Pakistan. In fact, with regard to Pakistan the main concern has been not whether Pakistan will use nuclear weapons against India but rather whether the Pakistani security system can adequately protect the weapons from capture by terrorists. In neither case does the West seem particularly concerned that both of these countries have the capability to turn their respective capitols into glowing mounds of sand.

Iran, on the other hand, knows fully well that any attempt to use nuclear weapons against its neighbors, not to mention against Israel, would result in an immediate retaliation. There would be no percentage in such a game, not to mention that Iran lacks a full delivery system that could get its weapons across US-dominated Iraq, US puppet Jordan and into Israel.

Each time the focus turns to Iran and its alleged intent I become nervous, largely because the specter of an Israeli or US military strike seems a possibility. There are those in both of those countries who believe that a quick air strike can teach Iran a lesson. It probably would; perhaps a lesson like how to shut off oil from ever leaving the Persian/Arabian Gulf. I suppose that would equally be a lesson for us in the West.

[BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum and co-author of, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.]

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Conflict Over Afghan War Sharpens Among Dems

A Bold Sen. Feingold
Could Lead the Way
Out of Afghanistan

By Tom Hayden
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Sept. 21, 2009 - The United States Senate is our version of a house of lords, where time slows down in the name of a "deliberative process" even when the world seems on fire to the ordinary eye.

And so the other day, with concern about Afghanistan rising, with American troops dying at record rates, with the U.S.-supported Kabul regime in tatters, it was typical of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to declare that "the thing I'm going to do and recommend to my caucus is let's just take it easy. I'm going to wait until the president makes up his mind as to what he thinks should be done."

Then there is Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold. By everyday standards, he is a cautious person, calling for a "flexible timetable" for American troop withdrawals but also for "continued strikes on Taliban and al-Qaida leaders." Sounds like an uncertain trumpet. But in the culture of the Senate, Feingold is considered downright hyperactive, often accused of being a loner who doesn't play well with the senior oligarchs.


The truth is that Feingold has learned to play the Senate game when it comes to new proposals. Like chess, when a single senator moves, other senators follow or readjust. That's what is happening. Not a single senator had spoken out against the war until Feingold said in an Aug. 24 interview in Appleton that the U.S. should consider a flexible timetable.

Feingold amplified his views in a Sept. 17 interview I held with him, asserting that he will vote against any troop escalation, "unless I hear some very different arguments than what I've already heard." He also will vote against the coming defense authorization bill if it "follows down this misguided path." He said he might offer amendments to the bill, perhaps on the timetable.

Feingold's timetable proposal triggered a stampede, or at least a crawl, to the microphones. Sen. Carl Levin said an increase of U.S. troops should be delayed for one year, proposing a buildup of Afghan troops instead. Sen. John Kerry said he was rethinking Afghanistan. So did senators Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Robert Casey, Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders. Speaker Nancy Pelosi opined that votes for another year of war might not be there in the House.

That was a pretty fast response for a senator the critics describe as isolated. The label is perhaps the price Feingold pays for being prematurely right.

We have been here before. In 2005, Feingold was the first senator to propose a specific withdrawal deadline of one-year from Iraq. I wrote at the time that his suggestion, while too modest, was a "brave departure from the ice house of the Senate." By 2006, Feingold was joined by 13 senators on his withdrawal proposal and had prompted a proposal from Levin for a more gradual phased withdrawal. By July 2007, Reid had joined the entire Democratic Senate bloc in supporting an amendment to phase out the U.S. occupation.

Feingold now stands in a Democratic tradition that includes Sens. Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern and Robert F. Kennedy, all the way back to Wisconsin's Sen. Robert LaFollette. The major difference is that those recent Democratic candidates were running for president in the wake of a passionate "dump Johnson" movement, whereas the challenge for Feingold and other Democrats today is to dump the Afghanistan war without dumping President Barack Obama and the party's congressional majorities.

Military leaders and Republicans are sure to weigh in that they see "light at the end of the tunnel." Feingold has tried to armor himself with the argument that America is becoming weaker in the war against al-Qaida as long as it occupies Afghanistan. As for firing drones into Pakistan, he told me, "We will always reserve the right to act in the national security interests of the American people including targeting al-Qaida and Taliban leadership." Civilian casualties, he argues, can best be avoided "if we reduce our military footprint in that country."

The conflict is intensifying. Seventy percent of Democrats oppose the war. Wisconsin Rep. David Obey, the House appropriations chair, has given the president one year to show progress or face funding cuts. The Pentagon and national security hawks argue that there must be 18 to 24 months of "hard fighting" followed by 10 to 12 years of continued nation-building. At the present rate, that means 1,100 more American soldiers will die in Afghanistan by the end of 2011, as Obama faces re-election. More than 700 died during the Bush presidency. Although budget figures are foggy, Afghanistan is likely to become another $1 trillion war over a two-term Obama presidency.

That's why the Democrats already are facing a voter mandate, similar to those in 2006 and 2008, to somehow end the war and turn to more urgent priorities on the home front.

Feingold could be the Gene McCarthy of our time, though one seeking to end a war to save a presidency, not the other way around. But his inherent caution could leave the anti-war public wanting a bolder leadership. A flexible timetable is a talking point, not a proposal. The further use of Predators is likely to inflame anti-American sentiment to the benefit of insurgents. Why he lumps al-Qaida with the Taliban will need clarification.

The opening for Feingold may lie in the utter collapse of the Kabul government, a Humpty Dumpty that all the king's men will not be able to put back together with any legitimacy. Having failed to produce a credible client in Kabul, it could be time for the U.S. to launch all-party talks, including the Taliban and regional powers, in a diplomatic surge to stabilize Afghanistan. What Feingold needs to define is a face-saving exit strategy to complement his proposal for a troop withdrawal. For now, he only says he is "concerned" and "closely monitoring" the mounting evidence of fraud in Kabul, which could leave the United States without a partner that Americans - not to mention Afghans - can believe in.

[Tom Hayden is the author of 17 books, a former California state senator and a longtime peace activist.]

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Public Must Force an End to Afghan War

What is Obama's
Real Plan for
Afghanistan?

By Tom Hayden

Sept. 14, 2009 - What is Obama's real plan for Afghanistan? Surely he sees all the signs of quagmire that we do. So why is this happening?

The key to Obama is that he often assumbles what he considers "best practices" into new packages he then tries to promote. The other key is that like any President, he wants to avoid the appearance of losing, even if escalating doesn't assure winning. So here is what he is doing:

[1] Repeating the 2007 Iraq surge strategy of Gen. Petraeus. This was designed for political reasons, to lessen the Iraq violence in order to suppress the Iraq issue as the defining one in the presidential elections. As Petraeus said at the time, he wanted to speed up the Iraq clock to slow down the American one. Anti-war critics were caught off balance. The surge "worked" in ways that were under-reported. First, nearly 100,000 Sunni insurgents were put on the American payroll if they agreed not to shoot American troops. Second, the same McChrystal who now commands Afghanistan was in charge of a massive top-secret extra-judicial killing operation that devastated the remaining insurgents and gave a leading US operative "orgasms" [details in Bob Woodward's last book].

[2] Repeating Richard Holbrooke's diplomatic role in the Balkans where he presided over the complicated Dayton all-party talks on Bosnia, which cobbled together a fragile peace of sorts for the next decade. Holbrooke even negotiated with Slobodon Milosovic over pear brandy and in hunting lodges while the US military campaign was tightening against the Serbian leader. Holbrooke has been managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine, and a director of Lehman Bros. and AIG. He is a symbol of so-called "soft power." As Obama's special ambassador to Afghanistan and Pakistan, he has assembled a large team of diplomatic, political, commercial and agricultural advisers who serve as a shadow neo-colonial state ready to assume responsibility for a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan. He famously said last month that it was impossible to define "success" in Afghanistan "but we'll know it when we see it."

In summary, the Obama plan is to use escalating military force to weaken - but probably not defeat - the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, largely based among Pashtun tribes. According to the plan, the next 12-18 months are the "critical window" for "demonstrating measurable progress" in disrupting and dismantling al Qaeda "and its allies" in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As the escalation kills and wounds greater numbers of Taliban, the violence will be described as declining, and Holbrooke's soft-power infrastructure will take over the role of nation-building, including standing up a newly-trained police force and army of hundreds of thousands of Afghans. In this plan, US casualties then will decline after the first 18-24 months and a phased withdrawal can proceed, ending in five, ten or 12 years.

The latest version of the plan is contained in the August 10 Pentagon "sensitive but unclassified" report, "United States Government Integrated Civilian-Military Campaign Plan for Support to Afghanistan", by generals Karl Eikenberry [chief of mission in Kabul] and Stanley McChrystal, US commander. Their document is laced throughout with references to "civ-mil" strategies and "civ-mil" units, as if to emphasize the seamless connections between hard power and soft.

Perhaps it is a tribute to American and global public opinion, but the military strategy lacks any bloodthirsty references to combat, instead describing goals in sanitized language such as this: "International security forces [aka US troops] in partnership with Afghan security forces reverse security trends especially in Helmand, Kandahar, Khost Paktya and Paktika, facilitating GIRoA [Kabul government] presence at sub-national level."[p.17] the only slip came last week when the generals openly talked of using more "trigger pullers" on the ground and outsourcing more non-combat duties.

Have no doubt, they will kill a lot of Afghans and Pakistanis without press releases. Given unlimited time, troops and funding, it is possible that the US strategy can succeed in suppressing a restless Afghanistan/tribal Pakistan, though at the expense of numerous other American priorities. But with a majority of Americans and 70 percent of Democrats opposed to the war and occupation, with similar anti-war majorities rising in NATO countries, the question is whether the Obama strategy can appear to "succeed" in the short run.

The brief answer is no.

First, the current military surge is resulting in higher American troops losses than at any time since the beginning of the war. At the July-August 2009 rate, another 1,100 American troops will die by the end of 2011, on top of some 700 who were killed on Bush's watch. The American death toll inevitably has to rise before it ever begins to subside, if it even does by the end of Obama's first term. The dispatch of more American troops will increase the American casualty rates in the short term, stirring more questions from the public and Congress.

Similarly, the civilian casualty rates in Afghanistan and Pakistan will still increase in an escalated war, inflaming public opinion, even if the Pentagon's tighter guidelines are actually followed. The latest controversy over air strikes called by German forces shows the impossibility of truly "surgical" strikes, pits most Afghans against the foreign forces, and is having an unsettling effect on the Merkel coalition.

Second, unlike Iraq or the Balkans, the longer the foreign occupation, the more the Afghanistan client state weakens. The same is proving true in Pakistan, where the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas [FATA] and Baluchistan [homeland of Pakistan's Pashtun] show signs of breaking from the grip of the centralized state. The most immediate crisis is the discrediting of the Afghan government in the presidential election on which the entire American strategy depends. The civ-mil strategy paper sets a near-term goal of a "capable, accountable and effective government" in Afghanistan, and states that the "most important component [of the plan]", according to the document, "is a strong partnership with the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan [GIRoA]." But the US government was unable either to [1] fix the recent elections to benefit its client in Kabul, or [2] unable to prevent its own client from engaging in the most blatant of vote-rigging tactics.

We should not be surprised at this catastrophe. The same US government ignored, or was ignorant of, the "Lord of the Flies" behavior rampant among the private security contractors in charge of security at the American embassy in Kabul.

Now the US has dwindling choices. Ahmad Karzhai and his main opponent, Abdullah, are made of the same cloth. Any foreign plan to impose another leadership is sure to be rejected. The entire US plan to combine military and civilian tracks is derailed.

Whoever was responsible for this failed US strategy, from Karzhai to his American consultants at the highest levels, should be forced to resign. President Obama should retreat with his most trusted advisers to his most secluded study to ask who led him to this place, and quietly plan to slip out of the untenable position he is in. When President Kennedy realized that he could not trust his advisers during the Cuban missile crisis, he turned to his brother Bobby to open a second, secret track. Obama needs a Bobby.

The Democratic-led Congress, which is hardly known for a consistent anti-war stance, may be better able to see the quagmire in the making, and begin hearings on an exit strategy if only to avoid political consequences to their self-interests down the road.

The indispensible factor- never consulted by the experts but never ignored by the consultants- is the 70 percent of Democratic voters who, having no stakes in a failed enterprise, are the difference between winning and losing for the Congress and administration in 2010 and 2012. The public is the only force capable of making Congress step back from the brink.

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First Blood: GOP vs. Van Jones & Team Obama

Graphic: Fascist 'Anti-Fascist' Poster

The Afrikaner Party
Draws First Blood:
Van Jones, Obama
and the Audacity
of Capitulation

By Tim Wise

September 7, 2009 - Van Jones, special advisor to the President's Council on Environmental Quality, has resigned from the administration. To be honest, he was forced out. Oh, perhaps not directly, but if not, then by the stunning silence of his employer. An employer more concerned about appeasing the right-wing bullies who sought to make Jones a liability for him, than about standing up for a brilliant thinker on both economics and ecological issues, and confronting the conservative talk-show hosts who have libeled and slandered Jones (literally) over the past month.

The right has shown no shame in their relentless pursuit of Jones's political scalp. They have fabricated from whole cloth details of his life, calling him a convicted felon and instigator of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. This, in spite of the fact that he has no criminal record whatsoever and wasn't even in Los Angeles when those riots were happening. His arrest at that time was part of a sweep of dozens of peaceful marchers in San Francisco, involved in a protest at the time of the riots. He was released, charges were dropped, and he was paid damages by the city. This is not what happens to criminals, but rather, innocent people who have done nothing wrong.



Jones should sue the living shit out of Glenn Beck, his employers at Fox News, and every other prominent liar who has repeated the baseless allegations of his criminal record in recent weeks. He should wipe them out, take their money, leave them penniless and begging on the streets, without health care. They would deserve it. Perhaps Beck's AA sponsor or the Mormons who he credits with "saving" his wretched soul can then take care of him and his family. Since surely he wouldn't want the government to lend a hand.

They have twisted other aspects of Jones's past, suggesting his brief stint with a pseudo-Maoist group makes him a secret communist in the heart of government, this despite his more recent break with such groups and philosophies, in favor of a commitment to eco-friendly, sustainable capitalism. They have called him a black nationalist, which he admits to having been for a virtual political minute in his youth, and have suggested he's a "truther" (one who believes George W. Bush masterminded the 9/11 attacks as an "inside job"). As for this last charge, their evidence consists of Jones's signature on a petition, which originally called merely for more openness about the pre-9/11 intelligence available to the former administration, but which was later altered to reflect the conspiratorial lunacy of its creators. Jones, and many others who reject the truthers' nonsense, were tricked into signing and were appalled by the final product. But none of this matters to the right. Because after all, none of it was ever the point.

This is not about convicted felons. The right loves convicted felons, as long as their names are Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy. The former of these (whose convictions were eventually vacated on a technicality) helped direct an illegal war from the Reagan White House, which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of innocent Nicaraguans. And the latter helped plan the Watergate break-in, advocated political assassination during his time in the Nixon White House, and even advised folks on how to kill federal agents several years ago, from his radio show perch ("head shots" he roared). But none of his friends on the right ever suggested that such talk put him beyond the pale, or should result in him being silenced.

This is not about having an arrest record. After all, there are many anti-abortion zealots with arrest records, hauled in and then ultimately released after blocking access to family planning clinics. But Glenn Beck doesn't make them public enemy number one. Nor would he, or any of his political soulmates, seek to prevent such persons from having roles in a future Presidential administration. Indeed, they would likely consider such a record a bonafide qualification for higher office.

This is not about believing in conspiracy theories. Surely not. Beck of all people can hardly condemn anyone for that--even if Jones did subscribe to such things, which he doesn't--for it is he who believes, among other things that Obama is planning on a mandatory civilian defense corps, which will be like Hitler's SS, that Obama "hates white people" and has a "deep seated hatred for white culture," that Obama is pushing health care merely as a way to get reparations for black people, and that he secretly wants to bankrupt the economy to force everyone to work for ACORN. It is Beck who is among the leading voices suggesting that the President's upcoming speech to schoolchildren--in which he will implore them to study hard--is really just an attempt to indoctrinate them into a new version of the Hitler Youth. No, these people love to push nonsensical conspiracy theories. It is their bread and butter. It is all they have, in fact.

Nor is this about Jones's remarks in a speech, given prior to becoming part of the administration, to the effect that the reason Republicans get things done is that they're willing to be "assholes," while many Democrats, including Obama, aren't. Conservatives don't mind that kind of talk. They loved it when Dick Cheney said go "fuck yourself" to Senator Patrick Leahy in 2004. Not to mention, right-wingers say far more offensive things than that, on a regular basis, but remain in good standing, and are surely never condemned by their fellow reactionaries. What's worse: Jones calling Republicans assholes, or Rush Limbaugh saying that most liberals should be killed, but that we should "leave enough so we can have two on every campus--living fossils--so we will never forget what these people stood for?"**
What's worse, Jones's asshole remark, or Anne Coulter saying, among the many venomous syllable strings that have toppled from her lips, that the only thing Tim McVeigh did wrong was choosing to blow up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, rather than the New York Times building?

This is not about socialism, as Jones is not a socialist. Oh sure, he's associated with some, and might still be friends with several to this day. And so what? Martin Luther King Jr. associated with socialists and communists because they supported the civil rights struggle and the black freedom movement at a time when the rabid anti-communists were at the forefront of attempts to maintain formal white supremacy. Which is to say that the socialists and the communists were on the right side, and the red-baiters were on the wrong one. Which was also true about the fight for the 40-hour work week, the 8-hour day, the end of child labor, the right of women to vote, and every other advance for freedom and justice in this nation in the past 100 years. But of course, Glenn Beck explained on the radio this past July 4th that he "hates the last 100 years of American history," so I guess we know what side he would have been on in all those battles.

Let's be clear, this is about one thing only: namely, the attempt by the right to exploit white reactionary fears about black militancy. It is the same tactic they tried with Rev. Jeremiah Wright in 2008. They did not confront Wright's narrative--the accuracy of which was far stronger than they would like to admit--nor do they actually grapple with Jones's ideas (it is doubtful that Beck has even read Jones's best-selling book, for instance). Rather, they present a caricature, a bogey man with black skin, an occasional scowl, and an attitude. Angry, confrontational, "uppity," and too close to the President. Which means that Wright=Obama=Jones=Malcolm X. It's a trope the right has banked on for years: using racial memes and symbols to scare Jim and Susie Suburb. Put the face of black anger out there and watch your devotees respond like Pavlov's dog.

It's something I first saw up close and personal in 1992. The woman I was dating at the time was an interior designer and had scored a contract to decorate the VIP lounges at the Houston Astrodome for the GOP National Convention. I viewed it as a great opportunity to do some enemy reconnaissance, so I lurked around the literature tables and took in the imagery beamed from the jumbotrons to the assembled conventioneers. One afternoon, we arrived before the main hall was opened to the delegates, and as I looked up at the screens above the floor, I saw the image that would be there to greet them as they entered a half-hour later: a massive, pixillated image of hip-hop artist Ice-T, whose speed metal band Bodycount had recently gotten in trouble for their song, "Cop Killer." The Republicans wanted their delegates to know who the enemy was. Not just Ice-T, but anyone who listened to his music, anyone who looked like him.

And that is what the attack on Van Jones is about: exploiting white fears and anxieties. Anxieties about a black President, anxieties about a basket-case economy (which they're trying to blame on the black President even though it was well in the crapper before he came along), anxieties about a changing demographic balance in the nation (which animates their fear and anger over immigration), anxieties about a popular culture whose icons look less and less like them as the years go by. And so they play up the militant black guy image, turning a low-level bureaucrat into a "Green Jobs Czar," (the latter of which term they have sought to spin into a communist thing, despite the fact that the Russian Czars were actually the royalist pigs who were thrown out by the Russian left, a small historical detail which doesn't matter to illiterate people of course), and making him the bad guy who's running the Obama administration from behind the scenes.

No, it's not only about race. But if you think it's merely a coincidence that the right has sought to make Jones such an issue--rather than some of the other administration officials they are now threatening to "expose" (two of whom are white)--then you haven't been paying attention to Republican and conservative politics for the past forty years. This is what they do. It's the only language they speak, at least fluently. Which is why when John McCain--to his credit--tried to move away from this method a bit, and refused to push the Jeremiah Wright theme during the general election campaign, so many on the hard-right criticized him. They didn't want him to talk about Bill Ayers: they wanted him to talk about Wright. Even though Ayers was the one with the criminal record and the links to political violence, while Wright was the military veteran and preacher with a storied history of community contributions. Why? Because they knew that Wright would be the better image. To link Obama to a white radical is one thing. But to link him to a black one? Oh, much, much better. This is why, in the instant case, they kept pushing Van Jones's non-existent connection with the Los Angeles riots, and his supposed felony record. Nothing better than a marauding criminal black man to get white fears into the stratosphere.

This is, it appears, the emerging political agenda of the Republican Party, and certainly its right-wing: a group that has decided, apparently, to go all in as a party of angry white people (and the few folks of color willing to look past their incessant race-baiting). They have circled the wagons, all but given up on reaching out to black and brown voters, and are putting all of their chips on white.
And everything they are saying about Van Jones was what people like them said about civil rights leaders in the 50s and 60s: about Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy, and John Lewis, and Fannie Lou Hamer. They were communists, and revolutionaries, and a danger to the republic. Make no mistake, had they been old enough in those days, Beck and every modern-day movement conservative would have stood with the segregationists, with the bigots, with the mobs who burned the buses carrying freedom riders. They would have stood with the police in Philadelphia, Mississippi, even as they orchestrated the killing of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner. They would have stood with Bull Connor in Birmingham. How do we know? Easy. Because not one prominent conservative spokesperson of that time did the opposite. Not one. That's who they are. And the minute you forget that, the minute you insist on treating them better than they would treat you, the minute you insist on playing by rules that they refuse to as much as acknowledge, all is lost. They do not believe in democracy. They believe in power. White power. They believe in the past. They are Afrikaners, and it's about time we started calling them that.

(**) This quote, which appears in David Neiwert's book The Eliminationists was reported originally in the Denver Post, December 29, 1995.

Tim Wise is the author of four books on race. His latest is Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama(City Lights: 2009).

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Get Clear and Organized on the Rising Danger

Photo: Armed far rightist at Town Hall event

Don't Wait for
Obama To Take On
the Political Right!

By Bill Fletcher

Executive Editor Black Commentator

September 2, 2009 - Over the last number of months, as the political Right has intensified its vicious campaign against President Obama and some of his reform efforts, there has been increasing frustration in progressive circles with the failure of the Administration to regain its stride and move a counter-offensive. A Washington Post op-ed by Peter Dreier and Marshall Ganz ["We have Hope; Now where's the Audacity", August 30, 2009] summarizes both this frustration but also offers a useful critique. That said, I believe that it is worth offering two additional concerns.

The first is historical. The outrageous activity that we are witnessing on the part of the political Right is not a new phenomenon. The political Right in the USA has demonstrated time and again an ability to engage in brutal, defamatory and highly repressive activity since the formation of this country. Such activity, of course, includes the highly repressive McCarthy Era, but it also includes periods such as the notorious 1919 Red Scare, with the repression of the Left and progressives soon followed by the Sacco & Vanzetti sham trial and execution. The 1930s was not all fun and games, despite the activity of a well organized political Left. Union organizing efforts were regularly attacked, and not just through harsh language. The appearances of employer-sponsored paramilitary outfits like the "Black Legion" were aimed at undermining the efforts by workers at self- organization. And, who can forget the notorious Father Coughlin, the right-wing radio priest?



There is a tendency to overlook these moments in US history, particularly on the part of white activists. There are myths regarding periods of normal bi- partisanship and rational discourse that allegedly contrast with today. While there are differences between today and earlier periods, we should keep in mind that today's political Right stands on the shoulders of their predecessors, having new technology but often conveying very similar messages.

What is it about today's Right? Among other things they are "irrationalists." Just so that there are no misunderstandings, this does not mean that they are simply irrational, which many of them are. Instead, the message that much of the political Right articulate is drawn from an ideology that has no relationship to the truth, scientific investigation, history or critical reasoning. Instead, the appeal is to frustration, anger, resentment, myths and scapegoating. Again, this is not particularly new when one views the history of the political Right in the USA.

What we are seeing, however, is an attempt to overturn the entire history of the 20th century by the political Right. A few years ago, a right-wing commentator suggested that government needed to be reduced to the size and role that it occupied at the time of President McKinley (circa, Spanish-American War, 1898). Such a suggestion, as outrageous as it sounds, is only the tip of the ice-berg. What the political Right, and particularly the right-wing populists, aims to accomplish is not only to narrow the scope and role of government, but to beat back the various advances by progressive social movements. In this sense it is almost misleading to refer to them as "conservatives," a term that generally suggests going slow. Rather the right-wing populists, including but not limited to crypto-fascists, wish to turn back the clock totally, albeit with slick language and suggestions of race neutrality, only to cover a far more devious set of objectives.

The second point or concern is that the Obama administration has been very slow to respond to the intensity of the campaign being carried out by the political Right. Part of this may be a reflection of underestimating the nature of this right-wing, white backlash against his election (and all that it represented). Part of this may also be a reflection of the fact that his is an effort to reform neo-liberal capitalism not, at least at this point, to challenge neo-liberalism (even in the name of defending capitalism!). Thus, combined with Obama's personality to begin negotiations from the middle and to seek bi- partisanship, he and his administration have been quite reluctant to go on the warpath against the irrationalist Right.

Commentators on the progressive side of the aisle have been pointing to the fact that something needs to be done in the face of this right/white backlash. The assumption is that we must lay out a set of tactics for President Obama to choose from such that he can take the lead. I would suggest an alternative course.

In the wake of death of Senator Ted Kennedy I found myself thinking about the relationship of the Civil Rights Movement to President John Kennedy. Using the logic of many of today's progressives, the focal point of the Civil Rights Movement would have been appeals to President Kennedy. That was, in fact, exactly what the Civil Rights Movement did NOT do. The Civil Rights Movement had a set of objectives, with the idea of outlawing Jim Crow segregation at the center. Demands were placed upon President Kennedy, but the movement did not wait for Kennedy to act. Instead, they created an environment in which he had to act.

This is a critical lesson today. Progressive forces should not be waiting for President Obama to act. Many people realize this implicitly, such as those who continue to demand Medicare for all, despite the fact that President Obama removed that from the table. Yet in the face of the irrationalist Right, progressives must mobilize on different fronts. We see evidence that this is happening, but we need to up the tempo. The developing campaign against the inflammatory right- wing pundit Glenn Beck is a case in point. Pressuring his sponsors to drop him is of incredible importance, yet we must go further. Progressives must debunk, in the public arena, everything that comes out of his mouth. We must put him on the defensive such that regular, everyday people question his sanity and not just the accuracy of his remarks.

In the face of the disruptions of the healthcare town halls, there could have been greater progressive mobilization. While it was great that Congressman Barney Frank took on some of the idiots, progressives needed to be inside and outside these town halls, not only holding signs but blocking attempts at disruption. Frankly, if we have the numbers, the irrationalist Right will shrink, but they will not shrink simply because we plead for rational debate. They are not interested in rational debate; they are interested in destabilizing the Obama administration and blocking any efforts at progressive change.

The other day I had a discussion with a progressive individual who attended one of those town hall meetings. He noted that otherwise reasonable people seemed quite willing to believe completely irrational and illogical assertions from the political Right. In periods of crisis, such a phenomenon arises from the deep, sort of along the lines of a red tide coming ashore. Regular people are looking for answers, and they tend to look for answers that correspond to the belief system which has shaped them. This is what makes the language and message of the right-wing populists so tempting.

Beating the Right cannot rely on Obama. It necessitates a level of self-reliance among progressives that focuses on identifying the nature of the crisis; moving real struggles for significant structural reforms, struggles that involve regular people rather than lobbying campaigns; and efforts to expose and crush the political Right. The Right must be understood at a mass level for what they are, harbingers of hell. That will only happen when progressives offer genuine alternatives and mechanisms for achieving them.

BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum and co-author of, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA.

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White Flags & Blue Dogs Useless vs the Right

Photo: William Greider

Squandered
Opportunity

By William Greider
The Nation

After his brilliant beginning, the president suddenly looks weak and unreliable. That will be the common interpretation around Washington of the president's abrupt retreat on substantive heathcare reform.

Give Barack Obama a hard shove, they will say, rough him up a bit and he folds. A few weeks back, the president was touting a "public option" health plan as an essential element in reform. Now he says, take it or leave it. Whatever Congress does, he's okay with that The White House quickly added confusion to the outrage by insisting the president didn't really say anything new. He's just being flexible. He still wants what most Democrats want--a government plan that gives people a real escape from the profit-driven clutches of the insurance companies. But serious power players will not be fooled by the nimble spinners. Obama choked. He raised the white flag, even before the fight got underway in Congress.

He hands the insurance industry a huge victory. He rewards the right-wing frothers who have been calling him Adolph Hitler or Dr. Death. He caves to the conservative bias of the major media who insist only bipartisan consensus is acceptable for big reform (a standard they never invoked during the Bush years). Obama is deluded if he thinks this will win him any peace or respect or Republican votes.
Weakness does not lead to consensus in Washington. It leads to more weakness. The Party of No intends to bring him down and will pile on.

Obama has inadvertently demonstrated their strategy of vicious invective seems to be working.

Barack Obama mainly did this to himself. To avoid the accusation of socialized medicine, he intentionally shrouded his objectives in bureaucratic euphemisms like "public option." What the hell does that mean? It doesn't mean anything. The vagueness allowed anyone to fill in the blanks and anxious people did so in apocalyptic ways. The original idea, after all, was making something similar to Medicare available to anyone between childhood and old age who was either shut out by high prices or abused by insurance companies policing the system. This approach--call it Medicare Basic--would in theory give government the greater leverage needed to control the price inflation and reshape the system in positive ways. If you told people "public option" was a Medicare equivalent, the polls would demonstrate the popularity. Instead, that objective is now at risk. The right still calls Obama a covert socialist.

There is a more cynical interpretation of Obama's flexibility. He is coming out right about where he wanted to be. Forget the good talk, it is said, this president never really intended to do deep reform that truly alters the industrial power structure dominating our dysfunctional healthcare system. He just wanted minimalist reforms he could sell as "victory." Not until years later would people figure out that nothing fundamental had been changed.

In this scenario, Obama has always been more comfortable with the center-right forces within the Democratic party--Senator Max Baucus and the Blue Dogs--and the Clintonistas of DLC lineage who now fill his administration. His real political challenge was to string along the liberals with reassuring talk until they were stuck with lousy choices-- either go along with this popular president's pale version of reform or take him on and risk ruining his presidency. This sounds a lot like the choices Democrats faced during the Clinton years.

Candidate Obama said it was "time to turn the page." We are still waiting to see what he meant.

I do not subscribe to the manipulative, deceptive portrait (not yet), but you can find lots of supporting evidence in Obama's behavior. His response to the financial crisis demonstrates a clear desire to restore Wall Street power, not to change it. His war strategy in Afghanistan looks like the familiar trap of open-ended counterinsurgency. The trap may soon close on him when the generals announce their need for more troops. Will this president dare to say no? Obama negotiated a truly ugly deal with the pharmaceutical industry--a promise not to use government bargaining power to bring down drug prices. His lieutenants still yearn to demonstrate "fiscal responsibility' by taxing the health-care benefits of union members or whacking Social Security.

In other words, this is really a decisive test for the Democratic party and its main constituencies. Will they go along with the president or push back and reject his misdirections? The burden will fall mainly on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House majority. They will be under intense pressure from the White House to stay "on message" with the president. Organized labor seems to be breaking out of the go-along passivity. Richard L. Trumka, soon to be president of the AFL-CIO, promises to blackball Blue Dogs or anyone else who double-crosses the working people who faithfully financed their election campaigns.

Taking the high road will be hard and divisive. But maybe this is at last the season when Democrats reveal which side they are on.

[© 2009 The Nation William Greider is national affairs correspondent for The Nation. He is author of "Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country" and, most recently, "Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country."]

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When 'Socialism' Isn't Really About Socialism

Red-Baiting and Racism:
Socialism as the
New Black Bogeyman

By Tim Wise
Progressives for Obama

August 10, 2009 - Throughout the first six months of his administration, President Obama--perhaps one of the most politically cautious leaders in contemporary history--has been routinely portrayed as a radical by his opponents on the far-right. In particular, persons who have apparently never actually studied Marxism (or if they did, managed to somehow find therein support for such things as bailing out banks and elite corporations) contend that Obama is indeed a socialist.

Reducing all government action other than warmaking to part of a larger socialist conspiracy, the right contends that health care reform is socialist, capping greenhouse gas emissions is socialist, even providing incentives for driving fuel efficient cars is socialist. That the right insists upon Obama's radical-left credentials, even as they push an Obama=Hitler meme (something they apparently think is fair, since, after all the Nazis were National Socialists, albeit the kind who routinely murdered the genuine article) only speaks to the special brand of crazy currently in vogue among the nation's reactionary forces.

As real socialists laugh at these clumsily made broadsides, and as scholars of actual socialist theory try and explain the absurdity of the analogies being drawn by conservative commentators, a key point seems to have been missed, and it is this point that best explains what the red-baiting is actually about.

It is not, and please make note of it, about socialism. Or capitalism. Or economics at all, per se.

After all, President Bush was among the most profligate government spenders in recent memory, yet few ever referred to him in terms as derisive as those being hurled at Obama. Even when President Clinton proposed health care reform, those who opposed his efforts, though vociferous in their critique, rarely trotted out the dreaded s-word as part of their arsenal. They prattled on about "big government," yes, but not socialism as such. Likewise, when Ronald Reagan helped craft the huge FICA tax hike in 1983, in a bipartisan attempt to save Social Security, few stalwart conservatives thought to call America's cowboy-in-chief a closet communist. And many of the loudest voices at the recent town hall meetings--so many of which have been commandeered by angry minions ginned up by talk radio--are elderly folk whose own health care is government-provided, and whose first homes were purchased several decades ago with FHA and VA loans, underwritten by the government, for that matter. Many of them no doubt reaped the benefits of the GI Bill, either directly or indirectly through their own parents.

It is not, in other words, a simple belief in smaller government or lower taxes that animates the near-hysterical cries from the right about wanting "their country back," from those who have presumably hijacked it: you know, those known lefties like Tim Geithner and Rahm Emanuel. No, what differentiates Obama from any of the other big spenders who have previously occupied the White House is principally one thing--his color. And it is his color that makes the bandying about of the "socialist" label especially effective and dangerous as a linguistic trope. Indeed, I would suggest that at the present moment, socialism is little more than racist code for the longstanding white fear that black folks will steal from them, and covet everything they have. The fact that the fear may now be of a black president, and not just some random black burglar hardly changes the fact that it is fear nonetheless: a deep, abiding suspicion that African American folk can't wait to take whitey's stuff, as payback, as reparations, as a way to balance the historic scales of injustice that have so long tilted in our favor. In short, the current round of red-baiting is based on implicit (and perhaps even explicit) appeals to white racial resentment. It is Mau-Mauing in the truest sense of the term, and especially since Obama's father was from the former colonial Kenya! Unless this is understood, left-progressive responses to the tactic will likely fall flat. After all, pointing out the absurdity of calling Obama a socialist, given his real policy agenda, will mean little if the people issuing the charge were never using the term in the literal sense, but rather, as a symbol for something else entirely.

To begin with, and this is something often under-appreciated by the white left, to the right and its leadership (if not necessarily its foot-soldiers), the battle between capitalism and communism/socialism has long been seen as a racialized conflict. First, of course, is the generally non-white hue of those who have raised the socialist or communist banner from a position of national leadership. Most such places and persons have been of color: China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, assorted places in Latin America from time to time, or the Caribbean, or in Africa. With the exception of the former Soviet Union and its immediate Eastern European satellites--which are understood as having had state socialism foisted upon them, rather than having it freely chosen through their own revolutions from below--Marxism in practice has been a pretty much exclusively non-white venture.

And even the Russians were seen through racialized lenses by some of America's most vociferous cold warriors. To wit, consider what General Edward Rowney, who would become President Reagan's chief arms negotiator with the Soviets, told Manning Marable in the late 1970s, and which Marable then recounted in his book, The Great Wells of Democracy:

"One day I asked Rowney about the prospects for peace, and he replied that meaningful negotiations with the Russian Communists were impossible. 'The Russians,' Rowney explained, never experienced the Renaissance, or took part in Western civilization or culture. I pressed the point, asking whether his real problem with Russia was its adherence to communism. Rowney snapped, 'Communism has nothing to do with it!' He looked thoughtful for a moment and then said simply, 'The real problem with Russians is that they are Asiatics'."

In the present day, the only remaining socialists in governance on the planet are of color: in places like Cuba or Venezuela, perhaps China (though to a more truncated extent, given their embrace of the market in recent decades) and, on the lunatic Stalinist fringe, North Korea. These are the last remaining standard-bearers, in leadership positions, who would actually use the term socialist to describe themselves. Given the color-coding of socialism in the 21st century, at the level of governance, to use the label to describe President Obama and his administration, has the effect of tying him to these "other" socialists in power. Although he has nearly nothing in common with them politically or in terms of his policy prescriptions, he is a man of color, so the connection is made, mentally, even if it carries no intellectual or factual truth.

Secondly, and even more to the point, we must remember what "socialism" is, especially in the eyes of its critics: it is, to them, a code for redistribution. Of course, some forms of socialism are more redistributive than others, and even late-stage capitalism tends to engage in some forms of very mild redistribution (as with the income tax code). But if you were to ask most who grow apoplectic at the mere mention of the word "socialism" for the first synonym that came to their mind, redistribution is likely the one they would choose. Surely it would be among their top two or three.

Now, given the almost instinctual connection made between socialism and redistribution, imagine what many white folks would naturally assume when told that this man, this black man, this black man with an African daddy, was a socialist. Even if those using the term didn't intend it to push racial buttons (and that is a decidedly large "if"), the fact remains that for many, it would almost certainly prompt any number of racial fears and insecurities: as in, the black guy is going to take from those who work and give to those who don't. And naturally, we all know (or at least our ill-informed prejudices tell us) who's in the first group and who's in the second one. Thus, the joke making the rounds on the internet, and likely in your workplace, about Obama planning on taxing aspirin "because it's white and it works." Or the guy with the sign at the April teabagger rally, which read, Obama's Plan: White Slavery. Or others who have carried overtly racist signs to frame their message: signs suggesting that Obama hopes to provide care for all brown-skinned illegal immigrants, while simultaneously murdering the white elderly, or that cast the President in decidely simian imagery, and refer to him, crudely but clearly as a monkey. Or Glenn Beck's paranoid screed from late July, which sought to link health care reform, and virtually every single piece of Obama's political agenda to some kind of backdoor reparations scheme. This, coupled with Beck's even more unhinged claim to have discovered a communist/black nationalist conspiracy in the administration's Green Jobs Initiative. All because the initiative is headed up by author and activist Van Jones: a guy whose recent book explains how to save capitalism through eco-friendly efforts at development and job creation. So even there, it isn't about socialism, so much as the fact that Jones is black, and was once (for a couple of months) a nationalist, and has a goatee, and looks determined (read:mean) in some of his more contemplative press photos.

Fact is, the longstanding association in white minds between social program spending and racial redistribution has been well-established, by scholars such as Martin Gilens, Kenneth Neubeck, Noel Cazenave, and Jill Quadagno, among others. Indeed, it was only the willingness of past presidents like FDR to all but cut blacks out of income support programs that convinced white lawmakers and the public to sign on to any form of American welfare system in the first place: a willingness that waned as soon as people of color finally gained access to these programs beginning in the 50s and 60s. But even as strong as the social program/black folks association has been in the past, it has, until now, never had a black face to put with the effort. With a man of color in the position of president, it becomes far more convincing to those given to fear black predation already. It isn't just that the government will tax you, white people. It's that the black guy will. And for people like him. At your expense.

Much as the white right blew a gasket at the thought of bailing out homeowners with sub-prime and exploding mortgages a few months back (and if you listened to the rhetoric on the radio it was hard to miss the racial animosity that undergirded much of the conservative hostility to the idea, since they seemed to think only persons of color would be helped by such a plan), they now too often view Obama's moves to more comprehensive health care as simply another way to take from those whites who have "played by the rules" and give to those folks of color who haven't. Even as millions of whites would stand to benefit from health care reform--and all whites, as with people of color would enjoy greater choices with the very public option that has drawn the most fire--the imagery of the recipients has remained black and brown, as with all social programs; and the imagery of the persons who would be taxed for the effort has remained hard-working white folks.

By allowing the right to throw around terms like socialist to describe the President and socialism to describe his incredibly watered-down, generally big business friendly approach to health care, while not recognizing the memetic purpose of such arguments is to ensure that the right will succeed in their demonization campaign. To respond by pointing out how the plan really isn't socialist, or how Obama really isn't a socialist misses the point, which was never, in the end, about economic systems or philosophies: none of which the folks on the right raising the most hell show any signs of understanding anyway. This noise is about race. It is about "othering" a President who is seen as a symbol of white dispossession: dispossession of white hegemony, white entitlement, white expectation, and white power, unquestioned and unchallenged from the darker skinned other. This is what animates the every move of the angry masses, individual exceptions notwithstanding. Unless the left begins pushing back, and insisting that yes, the old days are gone, white hegemony is dead, and deserved its demise, and that we will all be better off for it, the chorus of white backlash will only grow louder. So too will it grow more effective at dividing and conquering the working people who would benefit--all of them--from a new direction.

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As Obama's Support Erodes, Right is Resurgent

Will Progressives
Respond to the Attempt
to Overthrow The President?

By Danny Schechter
CommonDreams.org

August 1, 2009 - The tide of public opinion may be turning against the President. Pollsters report growing skepticism about health care reform, and more active hostility on racial matters, thanks to that "uncalibrated" expression of opinion on the arrest of Professor Gates in his own home. That remark turned him, in the eyes of some, from a small b black President into a militant Black Panther, or at least someone who can bashed as such.

These are the new controversial issues with no one right answer, and a noisy debate everywhere, but something else is also going on.



With Democrats fussing among themselves, with Obamacrats forced to rely on corporate media, the right-wing TV and radio stations close ranks behind the most self-righteously-correct ranters having a filed day poking, prodding, pummeling, and peeing into cups of their own resentment, hate and venom.

There is no smear that is beneath them, no inference or insult out of bounds. Lou Dobbs blesses the birthers while that Elmer Gantry of demagoguery, Glenn Beck, meditates on his mountain and pronounces Obama a racist. An Israeli settler refers to our President as "that Arab," and worse.

These are the nattering nabobs of negativity of our times, to resurrect an old canard once aimed at the left. The Yes We Can advocates seem to be taking refuge in the No We Won't center. The next thing you know, the removal of a democratically elected President that worked in Honduras might be attempted here at home.

Some of us are still singing "We Shall Overcome" when our adversaries are chanting "We Shall Overthrow."

If Barack's legitimacy as a citizen won't bring him down, his actions---moderate if not reactionary as they
are--- unites the crazies against him and drives them even more beserk. The contentious Congressman who vowed to "break him," should be taken seriously

This relentless riposte is having an effect on a demoralized and economically challenged population that is not well informed in the first place-except perhaps about Michael Jackson's dubious doctor who may have done the dirty deed. Sensing possible victory-whatever that means--- the Angeroid microfactions that lost the election are now seeking to polarize the public to topple the Administration with an electronic coup d'media. It is all that serious.

Only Jon Stewart seems to be calling them on their game, while at the same time despairing about the obvious missteps and mistakes that the White House is making. They may be a garden outside the Oval Office but there is a minefield inside it.

At the same time, another enemy is mounting a counterattack, perhaps in a more stealth manner, not by what it says, but by what it does The banks are deploying regiments of lobbyists and PR firms to defeat proposed new financial rules and an agency to protect consumers. They are escalating the gouging of the public.

Emboldened by billions in bailout monies, and funds from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, the Bankster are in full loot mode. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo reports that extravagant bonuses at some banks now outstrip revenues. The financial elite takes our money--and tells us to shove it.

As a new wave of foreclosures threatens, the banks are not willing to modify most mortgages-even those sold fraudulently, because they make more money forcing families out and reselling their homes.

The pace of regulatory reform, meanwhile is a slow-go, with few calls for more radical measures like a moratorium on foreclosures of the kind declared by FDR during the last Depression.

Are you aware that outside of the government, a not for profit called NACA (The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America) is touring the country mobilizing homeowners to demand financial relief. I was at their original "Save The Deam" event in Washington last summer where members of Congress and officials like FDIC chairman Sheila Bair pledged support, but little happened.

Government help as only reached 200,000 of the more than 12 million families in need. If you are not familiar with this issue or the role of devious mortgage servicers like Litton, owned by Goldman Sachs, see these You Tube videos on the PACFILM Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVyahxDc5OU and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mov0AVLsvQg

According to FEED News, NACA is doing better-even though they are not getting the national publicity they deserve, perhaps because media outlets don't want to send the few staffers they have to the heartland,

"About 50,000 people attended the second Save the Dream event in Chicago. This is a dramatic increase over the 25,000 people who attended NACA's first two Save the Dream events last year in Columbia, SC, and Washington, DC.

"One of the reasons why turnout has increased this year is NACA's use of optimized press releases, blog outreach, and YouTube videos to let people know that the national non-profit community advocacy and homeownership organization offers unprecedented solutions for homeowners caught up in the current mortgage and economic crisis. During the Save the Dream events, borrowers can get mortgages restructured the same day."

If the Obama Administration is to survive an ongoing assault still building steam, it needs a grass roots action-oriented army like the one NACA is building.
They can't just rely on the Netroots activists who prefer emails to organizing. They can't rely on that co-opted in-house DNC arm, Organizing for America either. That is there only to rally support for the White House.

A new movement has to develop outside the Democratic party in the same way that the right acts outside the GOP, and has built a capacity for independent action with echo chambers, message points and personalities.
Their ideas may be backward but their dedication can't be denied.

We can defend Obama's ideals, and also press for more action. As Jeff Cohen reminds us, we have a "president whose instinct is toward conciliation and splitting the difference with big business and the right wing. Sure, Obama was a community organizer once. That was decades ago when Russia was still our mortal enemy, Nelson Mandela was still an official State Department terrorist threat and the White House was still funding Islamist fanatics in Afghanistan. For the last dozen years Obama has been a politician -- and a consummate compromiser at that. Have we failed to notice?"

Can progressives fight a three front war---against the vicious right, against the slippery center, and for a more comprehensive and empowering agenda? Can they finally realize that all politics does not occur in DC, and that being tethered to the denizens on the Hill can be a liability at a time when most political chameleons enjoy so little respect.

Will they ever realize that they have to get into the economic trenches and fight the power of the banks with groups like A New Way Forward? Why is economic justice a priority for so few activists when these issues impact millions?

Knock, Knock, anyone there?

[Mediachannel's News Dissector Danny Schechter investigates the origins of the economic crisis in his new book Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal (Cosimo Books via Amazon). Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org ]

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Note to Obama: No 'Wiggling' on Honduras

Revenge in Latin America:
The Right Strikes Back!

By Immanuel Wallerstein
Progressives for Obama

July 15, 2009 - The presidency of George W. Bush was the moment of the greatest electoral sweep of left-of-center political parties in Latin America in the last two centuries. The presidency of Barack Obama risks being the moment of the revenge of the right in Latin America.

The reason may well be the same - the combination of the decline of American power with the continuing centrality of the United States in world politics. At one and the same time, the United States is unable to impose itself and is nonetheless expected by everyone to enter the playing field on their side.

What happened in Honduras? Honduras has long been one of the surest pillars of Latin American oligarchies - an arrogant and unrepentant ruling class, with close ties to the United States and site of a major American military base. Its own military was carefully recruited to avoid any taint of officers with populist sympathies.

In the last elections, Manuel ("Mel") Zelaya was elected president. A product of the ruling classes, he was expected to continue to play the game the way Honduran presidents always play it. Instead, he edged leftward in his policies. He undertook internal programs that actually did something for the vast majority of the population - building schools in remote rural areas, increasing the minimum wage, opening health clinics. He started his term supporting the free trade agreement with the United States. But then, after two years, he joined ALBA, the interstate organization started by President Hugo Chavez, and Honduras received as a result low-cost oil coming from Venezuela.

Then he proposed to hold an advisory referendum as to whether the population thought it a good idea to convene a body to revise the constitution. The oligarchy shouted that this was an attempt by Zelaya to change the constitution to make it possible for him to have a second term. But since the referendum was to occur on the day his successor would have been elected, this was clearly a phony reason.

Why then did the army stage a coup d'état, with the support of the Supreme Court, the Honduran legislature, and the Roman Catholic hierarchy? Two factors entered here: their view of Zelaya and their view of the United States. In the 1930s, the U.S. right attacked Franklin Roosevelt as "a traitor to his class." For the Honduran oligarchy, that's Zelaya - "a traitor to his class" - someone who had to be punished as an example to others.

What about the United States? When the coup occurred, some of the raucous left commentators in the blogosphere called it "Obama's coup." That misses the point of what happened. Neither Zelaya nor his supporters on the street, nor indeed Chavez or Fidel Castro, have such a simplistic view. They all note the difference between Obama and the U.S. right (political leaders or military figures) and have expressed repeatedly a far more nuanced analysis.

It seems quite clear that the last thing the Obama administration wanted was this coup. The coup has been an attempt to force Obama's hand. This was undoubtedly encouraged by key figures in the U.S. right like Otto Reich, the Cuban-American ex-counselor of Bush, and the International Republican Institute. This was akin to Saakashvili's attempt to force the U.S. hand in Georgia when he invaded South Ossetia. That too was done in connivance with the U.S. right. That one didn't work because Russian troops stopped it.

Obama has been wiggling ever since the Honduran coup. And as of now the Honduran and U.S. right are far from satisfied that they have succeeded in turning U.S. policy around. Witness some of their outrageous statements. The Foreign Minister of the coup government, Enrique Ortez, said that Obama was "un negrito que sabe nada de nada." There is some controversy about how pejorative "negrito" is in Spanish. I would translate this myself as saying that Obama was "a nigger who knows absolutely nothing." In any case, the U.S. Ambassador sharply protested the insult. Ortez apologized for his "unfortunate expression" and he was shifted to another job in the government. Ortez also gave an interview to a Honduran TV station saying that "I don't have racial prejudices; I like the sugar-mill nigger who is president of the United States."

The U.S. right is no doubt more polite but no less denunciatory of Obama. Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, Cuban-American Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and conservative lawyer Manuel A. Estrada have all been insisting that the coup was justified because it wasn't a coup, just a defense of the Honduran constitution. And rightwing blogger Jennifer Rubin published a piece on July 13 entitled "Obama is Wrong, Wrong, Wrong About Honduras." Her Honduran equivalent, Ramón Villeda, published an open letter to Obama on July 11, in which he said that "This is not the first time that the United States has made a mistake and abandoned, at a critical moment, an ally and a friend." Meanwhile, Chavez is calling on the State Department to "do something."

The Honduran right is playing for time, until Zelaya's term ends. If they reach that goal, they will have won. And the Guatemalan, Salvadorian, and Nicaraguan right are watching in the wings, itching to start their own coups against their no longer rightwing governments.

The Honduran coup has to be placed in the larger context of what is happening throughout Latin America. It is quite possible that the right will win the elections this year and next year in Argentina and Brazil, maybe in Uruguay as well, and most likely in Chile. Three leading analysts from the Southern Cone have published their explanations. The least pessimistic, Argentine political scientist Atilio Boron, speaks of "the futility of the coup." Brazilian sociologist Emir Sader says that Latin America faces a choice: "the deepening of antineoliberalism or conservative restoration." Uruguayan journalist Raúl Zibechi entitles his analysis "the irresistible decadence of progressivism." Zibechi in effect thinks it may be too late for Sader's alternative. The weak economic policies of Presidents Lula, Vazquez, Kirchner, and Bachelet (of Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile) have strengthened the right (which he sees adopting a Berlusconi style) and split the left.

Myself, I think there's a more straightforward explanation. The left came to power in Latin America because of U.S. distraction and good economic times. Now it faces continued distraction but bad economic times. And it's getting blamed because it's in power, even though in fact there's little the left-of-center governments can do about the world-economy.

Can the United States do something more about the coup? Well, of course it can. First of all, Obama can officially label the coup a coup. This would trigger a U.S. law, cutting off all U.S. assistance to Honduras. He can sever the Pentagon's continuing relations with the Honduran military. He can withdraw the U.S. ambassador. He can say that there's nothing to negotiate instead of insisting on "mediation" between the legitimate government and the coup leaders.

Why doesn't he do all that? It's really simple, too. He's got at least four other super-urgent items on his agenda: confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court; a continuing mess in the Middle East; his need to pass health legislation this year (if not by August, then by December); and suddenly enormous pressure to open investigations of the illegal acts of the Bush administration. I'm sorry, but Honduras is fifth in line,

So Obama wiggles. And nobody will be happy. Zelaya may yet be restored to legal office, but maybe only three months from now. Too late. Keep your eye on Guatemala.

[Commentary No. 261, July 15, 2009, Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein, distributed by Agence Global. For rights and permissions, including translations and posting to non-commercial sites, and contact: rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically, or e-mail to others, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To contact author, write: immanuel.wallerstein@yale.edu.

These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]

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Time to Stop Being 'Nickled and Dimed'

Left Margin Column

Message
to Obama:
We Need
a New Deal

By Carl Bloice
BlackCommentator.com

July 9, 2009 - Now they are out to nickel and dime us to death. Here in my home town the traffic and parking department has been prevailed upon to "step up" its enforcement activity - and maneuvering to have parking meters work far into the night - in order help cover some of the city's budget deficit. In Massachusetts, legislators have slapped a tax on candy. The California state legislature recently endorsed a $1.50 tax on a bottle of alcohol and added an additional $15 to the vehicle license fee.

The astonishing thing is that such measures, being undertaken across the country, are being approved and even plotted by some liberals and progressives. It's high time we all recognize that the people who get hit by traffic fines are the ones without garages and "sin taxes," by and large, target working people. They are not the ones who got the economy into the current mess but if some people have their way, they will pay through the nose for it. This, at a time when unemployment is soaring, working hours are being cut and paychecks are shrinking.


Nor is there anything good to be said for pitting the budgets for police and fire services against health and welfare services. That's not the way to nurture the progressive political majority needed to really address the current crisis. Yet, in the absence of measures to bring in new sources of revenue to run our cities and states, well-meaning people are maneuvered into challenging each other for pieces of the shrinking pie.

All across the nation, schools are being shuttered, senior meal programs decimated, community health centers eliminated and legal aid for the poor hammered.
We are being told there is no other way and that we should stoically accept this austerity and count what blessings we have left. The problem is that if the sacrifices being forced upon our families and communities are really necessary, then they are not being doled out with anything approaching equity.
They're still living it up big time in some parts of town.

"The mood among financiers is suddenly more cheery,"
wrote John Plender in the Financial Times the other day. In London and New York "trading profits are up and bonuses are back" And, rather than being reduced to something more reasonable, executive compensation packages are on the way up. "There is also a growing suspicion on both sides of the Atlantic that bankers, a lethal breed whose activities have pretty much throttled the global economy while causing government deficits to balloon, are going back to business as usual - a frightening prospect for taxpayers everywhere," he wrote.

Meanwhile, the country's employment crisis continues to worsen. When wandering in the desert, beware shimmering water on the horizon," read the Financial Times' Lex Column, July 2. "If May's better than expected jobs report offered the dehydrated US labor market hope of succor, June's miserable effort was a mouthful of sand." The June jobs data from the Labor Department contained "few signs of life at all,' it said adding, "Slowing growth in weekly earnings, now at 2.7 per cent year on year, is another serving of angst. And falling hours plus sluggish wages mean a further drag on US consumption - already constrained by debt-laden household balance sheets and tight credit. The mirage, and with it hopes of a speedy recovery, has vanished."

"The entire growth in jobs over the last nine years has now been wiped out - the economy currently has fewer jobs than it had in May 2000," says Economic Policy Institute economist Heidi Shierholz. "The labor force, however, has grown by 12.5 million workers since then.
"This is the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all jobs growth from the previous business cycle, a devastating benchmark for the workers of this country and a testament to both the enormity of the current crisis and to the extreme weakness of jobs growth from 2000-2007."

As economist Dean Baker notes in his Jobs Byte column, the percentage of the unemployed who have been out of work for more than 26 weeks increased by 2 percentage points to 29.0 percent in June and "Many of these workers will soon be exhausting even their extended unemployment benefits."

When drawing up the economic stimulus plan, the Obama Administration relied on a projection of an 8 percent jobless rate this year. It became clear a couple of months ago that figure would miss the mark. It now stands at 9.4 percent and the consensus is that it will reach 10 percent by Christmas. Pimco CEO and chief investment officer, Mohamed El-Erian, now suggests that it may go as high as 10.5-11 percent sometime next year. "Economists are currently spreading the word that the recession may end sometime this year, but the unemployment rate will continue to climb," Bob Herbert wrote in the New York Times last week "That's not a recovery. That's mumbo jumbo."

"There are now more than five unemployed workers for every job opening in the United States," wrote Herbert.
"The ranks of the poor are growing, welfare rolls are rising and young American men on a broad front are falling into an abyss of joblessness.

The "broad front" to which Herbert refers may relate to what I consider some of the worst mumbo jumbo floating around out there: the idea that education guarantees a good job or any job at all. One of the striking aspects of the job stats so far this year is the number of out-
of-work college graduates. It keeps on growing. The percentage of unemployed people with some college or an Associate degree was 4.4 percent last June, 7.7 this May and now stands at 8.0 percent. For those under 27 years old with a Bachelors degree or better, it's 5.9 percent. "Everyone is worse off in the current downturn, and young college grads are no exception,"
writes Kathryn Edwards of the Economic Policy Institute. adding, "Although still better off than their peers without a higher education, young college graduates face challenges unique to their age and situation - it is likely that they have considerable debt from financing school, have had no time to build up savings, and, if looking for their first job, are not eligible for unemployment benefits."

"The tough economy and tight labor market have tarnished the luster of a bachelor's degree for young college graduates seeking employment, wrote Tony Pugh for the McClatrchy newspapers. "New monthly survey data from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston finds that during the first four months of 2009, less than half of the nation's 4 million college graduates age 25 and under were working in jobs that required a college degree.
That's down from 54 percent for the same period last year."

"The problem is most acute in the 25-and-under age group among Asian female graduates and black and Hispanic male graduates," wrote Pugh. "The survey, of
60,000 households, found less than 30 percent of Asian female grads, 32 percent of Hispanic male grads and just over 35 percent of young black male grads working in jobs that require a bachelor's degree."

Of course, a young graduate working at a low-paying job means one less job opening for a kid with no degree.

The figures for unemployment among college graduates are, of course, relatively low percentages; the greatest burden of joblessness is falling on those without a high school diploma (15.5 percent) and high school graduates (9.8 percent) - especially young African Americans (37.9 percent - seasonally adjusted)
and Latinos (31 percent in May). The figure for 20-24 year old Latinos was 16.5% in May.

"Why this rampant joblessness is not viewed as a crisis and approached with the sense of urgency and commitment that a crisis warrants, is beyond me,' wrote Herbert, one of the very few mainstream commentators to consistently deal with this crisis in minority communities. "The Obama administration has committed a great deal of money to keep the economy from collapsing entirely, but that is not enough to cope with the scope of the jobless crisis."

In a clear and hard hitting piece July 2, Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times Columnist, Paul Krugman, laid out the challenge the worsening jobs picture places before the Obama Administration and the nation. He wrote that "as in the 1930s, the opponents of action are peddling scare stories about inflation even as deflation looms" and "So getting another round of stimulus will be difficult. But it's essential."

"Obama administration economists understand the stakes," wrote Krugman. "Indeed, just a few weeks ago, Christina Romer, the chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers, published an article on the "lessons of 1937" - the year that F.D.R. gave in to the deficit and inflation hawks, with disastrous consequences both for the economy and for his political agenda.

"What I don't know is whether the administration has faced up to the inadequacy of what it has done so far."

"So here's my message to the president: You need to get both your economic team and your political people working on additional stimulus, now. Because if you don't, you'll soon be facing your own personal 1937."

As he prepared to depart on a foreign trip last week, the President issued a Fourth of July Message to the country that contained the words: "as long as some Americans still must struggle, none of us can be fully content." So true. As the Times put it in an editorial a few days earlier: "The jobs report for June should put a chill on hopes for an economic recovery anytime soon." And it makes a compelling case for more government stimulus, as unpopular as that idea may be in Washington. Americans all over the country are struggling."

Petty and punitive taxes falling on working people is not the answer. Nor is robbing Peter to pay Paul.
What's needed to get us out of this mess is a unified message to the people who run our cities, states and those in Washington charged with protecting the general welfare, that we need a new deal.

[BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union.]

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Obama's Talk With Chavez: Something New?

The Possibility of
an Obama-Chavez
Understanding

By Tom Hayden

July 2, 2009 - The media is full of speculation about President Obama's deft "deflection" against President Hugo Chavez' maneuvering and finger-pointing in the Honduras crisis. But another narrative is possible, of an undisclosed new diplomatic collaboration replacing the constant tensions and CIA foreknowledge of the brief 2002 coup against the Venezuelan leader.

It is too early to define a new era, but something profoundly new began developing between Obama and Chavez at the hemispheric conference in April in Trinidad.


According to eyewitness sources, under the apparently blind eye of the global media, the two leaders had lengthy conversations. The media covered the friendly photo of the initial handshake between the two leaders, then made much ado about an apparently-impertinent Chavez handing Obama a book in Spanish by Eduardo Galleano.

What has not been reported is that Obama, leaving his advisers behind, held lengthy private conversations with Chavez where only an interpreter was present.

It is not known what occurred in the secret talks. But sources in Caracas say that Chavez has become fascinated with Obama, seeking to understand the new US president and the forces around him, partly with advice from Brazil's president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The Honduran crisis has been mounting for weeks. According to the New York Times', Chavez "had his playbook ready", planning to blame the CIA. But Obama, according to the Times' headlines, "deflected" the Venezuelan president by coming out strongly against the coup.

The real story is that a gradual rapprochement - not an alliance but a dialogue - is happening between the US and Venezuela, and it began in Trinidad, was pushed by Latin American leaders and welcomed by those like Obama, who prefer diplomacy over a return to US Cold War isolation.

It was no accident that Venezuela's ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, returned to Washington in recent days after his expulsion several months ago.

The rapprochement, if it holds, would seem to be welcome news. The fact that is has occurred so silently is evidence that peace has its enemies.

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Stopping 'The Long War' -- What It Demands of Us

The Long War
Needs a Long
Peace Movement

By Tom Hayden

The simultaneous conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and beyond are all connected to the Pentagon strategy of "the Long War" projected to last fifty years in "the arc of crisis" that just happens to stretch across Muslim lands where there are oil reserves and plans for Western-dominated pipelines. The term "Long War" was introduced by Gen. John Abizaid in the 1990s and is the perspective of counterinsurgency experts around the Pentagon and think tanks led by the Center for New American Security.

The Long War will require a long peace movement, and a different one.

Many veterans of the movement against the Iraq War, impacted by the multiple wars, the financial and budget crises, and confused about the Obama era, are pondering the question of what to think and do. The following are brief notes outlining a possible strategy:

Counterinsurgency goes back to Malaysia and Algeria. It has never "worked", except in Malaysia where conditions were unique.

Counterinsurgency is aimed at the home front, to keep American casualties low and, as Kagan writes, "off camera, so to speak."

In Iraq, it's hardly "victory" when the client government is bragging about the American withdrawal and the future is totally uncertain. The "surge" delivered as CNAS and Gen. Petraeus wished, by keeping the war out of the election [their words, not mine]. Now counterinsurgency can't help them. They are pledged to withdrawal without having won the war, without having secured Western oil contracts, and without having reliable Iraqi client allies.

In Afghanistan, counterinsurgency is at cross-purposes with the drone attacks which kill the civilians who are supposed to be protected [which is why David Kilcullen writes against the continued use of Predators]. 21,000 more American troops mean more visible American casualties. The US is at fundamental odds with Karzai, who represents the growing mainstream Afghan distrust of the US. American troops can never "protect" Afghanistan civilians from American troops! The contradictions between the US versus Europe, NATO versus the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, will increase and cannot be bridged.

In Pakistan, the US has succeeded in forcing Pakistan troops into fighting the domestic Taliban, partly because of the Taliban's relative unpopularity. But in the process, 2-3 million refugees have been generated in the past few weeks alone, the greatest refugee crisis since Pakistan's bloody origins. There will be more upheaval soon in South Waziristan. How on earth is this "protecting the civilian population"? Again it is the contradiction at the heart of counterinsurgency.

I would keep a focus on the need for an exit strategy, because the Pentagon and CNAS don't believe in an exit strategy short of "victory", which is most likely unachievable. Even the Center for American Progress [CAP] proposes a 10-12 year occupation, speaking only of Afghanistan. Add up and project the casualties and budget costs, and you have a trillion dollar war with several thousand American casualties. You will antagonize more Muslims and drive them into anti-US nationalism and extremism. You will be running a gulag of barbaric detention camps in these countries, multiplying the Guantanamo and Bagram crises. You will add to the collapsing dream of funding for health care, education and stimulus spending here at home. Obama will be burdened with wars and occupations during his entire presidency. We will not be safer.

My advice:

--Read and study the Long War. It's not paranoia, it's a Pentagon strategy.

--Understand that the Long War is against Muslim countries and over oil and pipelines. It spreads terrorism.

--Understand the need to link with human rights, and anti-torture coalitions, especially the clergy.

--Understand the need to link with groups focused on domestic budget priorities, especially labor and people of color.

--Understand why Alternative Energy is a priority for the peace movement and a threat to the Long War's premises.

--Obtain and continually spread information on the real costs in American blood, taxes and civilian casualties.

--Work around the clock on the media, convincing them to report a rationale critique with special emphasis on resisting the growing secrecy of these special operation strategies.

--Spend the next six months preparing to expand the 132 House votes for an exit strategy into critical hearings and 230 votes by next spring as Congressional elections approach.

--Don't attack President personally. He is trapped between the Long War and his promise of an exit strategy, but attack the occupations and include the argument that the Long War might doom Obama's domestic priorities and even his presidency.

--Build a giant constituency base in Congressional districts. Employ field organizers by regions to run anti-war campaigns on a community-organizing model. Avoid Beltway faction fights by focusing on what the grass-roots needs.

The CNAS is the new "best and brightest" group, and we should remember what happened to them in Vietnam.

The Long War will fail because the US is overextended militarily and economically, and the world is more multi-polar than unipolar. The world does not share the US Long War agenda. This over-extension will cause worsening problems at home, become a threat to the open society, and lead to serious political challenges down the road.

The choice is always empire versus democracy.

Tom Hayden is the author of Ending the War in Iraq. His writings can be found at www.tomhayden.com

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