Clinton Apologizes For Helping Crush Haitian Farmers

I can hardly believe it, but Change.org is reporting the former President Clinton has apologized for his role in bringing (so-called) free trade to Haiti, helping lead to a situation of exacerbating poverty, where "six pounds of imported rice now costs at least a dollar less than a similar quantity of locally-grown rice. So how can a Haitian farmer compete? The past 15 years have shown they simply can't."

Ruth Messinger points out in the piece that

Prior to the era of so-called "free trade," Haiti could feed itself, importing only 19% of its food and actually exporting rice. Today, Haiti imports more than half of its food, including 80% of the rice eaten in the country. The result is that Haitians are particularly vulnerable to price spikes arising from global weather, political instability, rising fuel costs and natural disasters, such as earthquakes that register 7.0 on the Richter scale. In fact, since the January earthquake, imported rice prices are up 25%.

As was pointed out in a previous J-post on Haiti by J-friend K. McAfee

Like other networks and op ed pundits, CNN reporters refer to Haiti's extreme material poverty despite, they say, a history of US efforts to "help". None have any sense of whom was actually helped by the 1915-35 US occupation (US & French banks, agribusiness, and the small Haitian elite), US support of Duvalier and other dictators (same beneficiaries, plus sweat-shop owners), the US aid & trade policies that undermined staple food production and created dependence on US rice exports, or US-backed neoliberal "adjustment" loan conditions and deliberate, ongoing undermining of the imperfect but legitimate Aristide and Preval governments by the US government and the Clinton Foundation.

It's nice to see someone in our government admit to any of this, even if it's after they're out of office. Better than never after all! -- or -- the interesting example where Colin Powell expressed "regret"* at the US role in the Chilean coup of September 11, 1973 that the US most certainly helped instigate (with former SecState Henry Kissinger playing a key role in that particular 9/11 disaster that set a dictatorship into motion that would, among other things, claim over 3,000 lives, among his other adorable war-criminalistic-sheningans that have led him to having to consult a team of lawyers to figure out where he can travel that he may not be extradited to Chile!), but (as can be seen in the same article above) this was followed by the Administration coming out and "clarifying" Powell's regret, so as to give no hint of an admission of guilt, to re-obscure the open secret of our actions in Chile and elsewhere.

If you've read the J/Anekantavada before, you know this isn't the first time I've looked askance at US actions, to say the least. To see us looking back on any of our "mistakes" (which I put in scare quotes because they were often the intentional action of our leaders) and, if this is true about Clinton, apologizing, well... I can't say it gives me hope, or quite makes me particularly proud to be an American, or makes up for the then and continuing actions of American Empire, but... gosh darn it, admitting when we Fucked Someone Else for fun and profit is a step, and a rarely taken one, much less apologizing for it. So, 1.5 cheers I suppose.

*An excerpt of Powell's 2003 comments can be found here. The money shot, in reference to a question of how the US could be the "moral superior" looking to bring democracy to Iraq, after our actions against democracy and human rights with respect to supporting the Chilean dicatorship:

So it is the will of the international community that Iraq disarm, and not just the moral superior position, as you describe it, of the United States. We have no desire to impose upon the Iraqi people a leadership that is to our choosing, but to give them an opportunity to choose their own leadership.

With respect to your earlier comment about Chile in the 1970s and what happened with Mr. Allende, it is not a part of American history that we're proud of. We now have a more accountable way of handling such matters and we have worked with Chile to help it put in place a responsible democracy.

One of the proudest moments of my life was going to Chile in the late '80s and speaking to all of the military officers in the Chilean armed forces, all the senior officers, and talking to them about democracy and elected representative government and how generals such as them and me -- I was a general at the time -- are accountable to civilian authority so that incidents of that kind or situations of that kind no longer arose.

There's quite an interesting implicit admission of wrong-doing here, considering the emphasis he puts on how things "of that kind" can't happen again, despite, of course, the fact that they happened many times before and many times since...

Why the impulse to vote for "That dude/tte I can have a beer with" makes sense: a progressive perspective

I've just been thinking about, and talking about with J-Mom, the whole "I'mna vote for a normal guy/gal, cuz I don't want no uppity folks with no horse sense makin' decisions for my country," phenomenon of the past few election cycles (or at least, the perception of the increase in this impulse in the past few elections).

Now, certainly this comes in part from the anti-education strain of "progressiveness" in the Republican propaganda, and some of it is a naive "he's a person, just like me, who understands my troubles." (And certainly, in the case of, say, Bush, it's completely artifice since he comes from a family with deep roots in Eastern elitism, wealth, Ivy League, etc.)

But in talking to J-Mom, I remembered myself of just eight years ago; before I became a news junkie, I assumed that basically the US system was ok, and just needed some mild reform to fix. Sure, politicians were politicians, but there wasn't a rot at the core. And I don't think I used to be a purely dumb person -- I just hadn't done the research, in effect.

Just like it takes a certain disposition to be ok with atheism -- to come face to face with that existential crisis of "this is all there is" and to accept it -- it takes a certain disposition (and exposure) to be ok with the fact that our government really, really ISN'T basically ok. That is, pretty much all of our politicians are out for themselves, and not the public good, to a greater or lesser extent. AND, our government has done some pretty horrific things in our names (Iraq is just the latest; cf. the Contra War/Iran-Contra, overthrowing Mossadegh and installing the Shah in Iran, intervention in Haiti, the "Spanish-American War," support for Augusto Pinochet, the Viet Nam war and the Gulf of Tonkin, etc. etc.). (This is not to say that people are inherently out for themselves; I don't believe in "human nature" in that manner of speaking (we're also not inherently cooperative; we're both at the same time, far more complex and more/less reassuring) -- but politicians, by the nature of what they have to do to get where they are, are overwhelmingly out for themselves, imho.) Having taught a class highlighting these actions by our government (as well as going through my own realizations) I know how hard it is to accept that the US is not "#1", unless we mean "#1 at looking at for ourselves using heavy artillery." We're just not a nice people on the world stage.

Any road -- it's much easier to accept that our government is made of good people who occasionally err, than that the elected politicians are basically out to preserve the status quo of American Empire. And if you do believe that there are forces out to preserve the advantages of the elites, it makes far more sense to try and find someone "normal," who won't betray your interests, because they share your optimism, your jingoism, your sense of being slighted, your religion. Basically -- Republicans. It's not just an appeal to prejudices (though that's part of it) -- it's an appeal to the belief that we are in control of our own government; that we can believe in something, and that the scary prospect of fundamental change in the system needn't be so seriously considered. After all, if our government is so cynical, we are complicit in it -- and who needs that on top of other problems?

So I get it, on a certain level. It requires me to remember who I was before, when I was an occasional news watcher, and didn't realize "how deep the Rabbit Hole went". As I've said to many people, I read several hours of news a day to get the understanding I have -- who among us can do that? Of course people buy a lot of bullshit, I'm sure I do too, but being a professional researcher with more flexibility than any non-academic worker, it's not that I'm smarter, it's that my training is in doubting everything and verifying it with 8 sources. (It is true that we are trying to avoid teaching critical thinking to our kids -- as Paulo Freire said -- paraphrased -- you can't expect the system that oppresses people and uses them as workers to educate these same people about the true nature of the system and how to fight it. So while we're all complicit in this, and every person has some responsibility to educate themselves, there's also the odds stacked against them.)

I came to these ideas in part because it also explains the PUMA phenomenon, that is, those that identified Hillary's struggles with their own and thus continue, or continued to support her, despite the fact that their background is as similar to hers as Bush's is. What they shared was a sense of aggrievement -- and it seems to have clearly (from non-PUMA's perspectives) overshadowed all of their goddamned sense, since the last thing a Clinton stood for was real change. (Implicit in all this is my belief that Obama won't, alas, bring real change either, but at this point, it is refreshing to hear someone voice true ideals I believe in, even if I am extremely skeptical they'll follow them.)

Of course, this strain of discourse flows from, I believe, a deeply cynical place, a place right at our founding where, Howard Zinn convincingly argues, there was not the same strain of deep racism, as class lines held people together more closely. He gives evidence in his fascinating (if hard to slog through sometimes) People's History of the United States that the Color Lines separating the interests of poor whites and poor blacks were not only not preexisting, but consciously constructed, rather than the result of some kind of natural racial antipathy.* This is, interestingly, possibly the same font as the invention of "White Trash," a construction I read about briefly from a book on the floor of J-Friend Lindsay's place, left there by one of her roommates. Knowledge comes from the darndest places -- it argued essentially that White Trash was a consciously employed derogatory term to further separate White and Black class interests in common. But... digress.

So I can understand the impulse to have someone "just like you," rather than an elite who will preserve elite interests, as they always have. And I understand the willfull self-delusion to construe political figures as being normal folks, rather than believing the alternative -- that they're deeply cynical, self-serving elites deploying cultural signals to appear like you, though they are not you. It's hard to admit that, and not forget that -- because doing so gives up the last vestiges of easy control over a system gone awry, and few wish to look into that abyss...

And seriously, PUMAs? If Dems can convince themselves that the real sexism Hillary faced means her elite background has something in common with the trials of everyday women/folks, then I can have some sympathy for the delusions necessary to believe Palin's moose-skinning is pertinent to the dream of having someone who knows your troubles be in charge. (Even if I believe in the end that it is deeply, deeply... wrong.)




* From Zinn's People's History, Chapter 2:

In spite of such preconceptions about blackness, in spite of special subordination of blacks in the Americas in the seventeenth century, there is evidence that where whites and blacks found themselves with common problems, common work, common enemy in their master, they behaved toward one another as equals. As one scholar of slavery, Kenneth Stampp, has put it, Negro and white servants of the seventeenth century were "remarkably unconcerned about the visible physical differences."...

...[Historian Edmund] Morgan concludes: "Once the small planter felt less exploited by taxation and began to prosper a little, he became less turbulent, less dangerous, more respectable. He could begin to see his big neighbor not as an extortionist but as a powerful protector of their common interests."
We see now a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks for slavery in America: the desperation of starving settlers, the special helplessness of the displaced African, the powerful incentive of profit for slave trader and planter, the temptation of superior status for poor whites, the elaborate controls against escape and rebellion, the legal and social punishment of black and white collaboration.
The point is that the elements of this web are historical, not "natural." This does not mean that they are easily disentangled, dismantled. It means only that there is a possibility for something else, under historical conditions not yet realized. And one of these conditions would be the elimination of that class exploitation which has made poor whites desperate for small gifts of status, and has prevented that unity of black and white necessary for joint rebellion and reconstruction.

No Surrender, No Retreat

I've been thinking this morning about my friends and colleagues who (correctly) point out that politics is all about compromise (this is usually when they're telling me I can't reasonably expect a President to not, apparently, compromise and at least partly support American empire, meaning partly supporting thousands of deaths of foreign nationals from US interventionism, subverting foreign democracies, abetting persecution of their own people, and to compromise, apparently, on the environment and, instead of putting us on a path to sustainability, put us on a path to a compromise on sustainability, which of course means support of unsustainability, since half a failure is still a failure when dramatic ecosocial collapse is concerned.

This is why, incidentally, I think a break with the two-party system is absolutely necessary as a prerequisite to a sustainable future, but something else occurred to me (that really could act independently of my "two party" assertion). I was thinking: what's the one thing people accept with little or no political compromise?

It is, of course, war. We're spending scads on Iraq, despite relatively equivocal support by the US public, because the Democrats, among others, are afraid of being responsible for "the next terrorist attack," or the "smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud." For reasons I can't quite consciously enunciate, somehow that overblown rhetoric gets by (with much criticism from certain sectors, to be sure) but overblown environmental rhetoric is sort of universally agreed to be dangerous (i.e. it's one of those things even environmentalists are supposed to say "Well, I agree in spirit but s/he went too far", sort of like everyone has to say, "Israel has a right to defend itself," before they can even make reasonable criticisms of Israel's treatment of Palestine). I guess it's a case of "whose ox is being gored," since there are criticisms from both sides in either case -- but because of the immediacy of war and villainous characters like Saddam Hussein, the charge of being unpatriotic or risking Americans' lives sticks much more easily when you have a practically real-life mustache-twirling villain.

But my point is, how do we make the environment and issue like the defeat of a foreign aggressor? People are very susceptible to the argument "We must stay until the job is done" (though it's also true that they get anxious for the job to GET done); can we use that same rhetoric for the environment?

Thinking about all this, I suppose probably not. That is to say, the reason the military-industrial complex gets pretty much all the money it wants is NOT because of popular support, but rather support from... the military-industrial complex. It's a back-scratching circle of government toadyism and industrial profit, while the actual public relatively consistently ranks military spending pretty far down on the spending-preference food chain (my reading of the data from a very established social polling group, having taken data since 1976, is that defense spending has never been higher than the #8 overall priority by their methodology -- which ranks priorities by subtracting the %age of people who think we're spending "too much" on a given item from the %age of people who think we spend "too little" in an area). So I guess it's not as if the problem is the public concerns per se but is indeed what Eisenhower was originally going to call the military-industrial-congressional complex in his Farewell Address to the Nation in 1961.

So that brings us back to a government that doesn't actually serve the priorities of the majority of the population (which, for example, ranks health as #1 priority in the GSS data mentioned above quite often, and consistently ranks the environment and education in the top five priorities, much above defense spending -- yet defense spending is said to be over half the annual US federal budget). And that brings me back to my theory that we simply cannot break out of this without breaking out of two parties... so I guess I still think I'm right, after all.

Ok, never mind...

B & J: Conclusion... Or IS it?

Becky commented on the most recent post in the debate.

Comments and response to follow -- but I think we've gotten to the meat of our disagreement and somewhat understand each other's points (I have to say, I don't feel like she completely got mine, but that's what this "Conclusion" is for -- and of course, if she feels like I didn't get hers, it's not really the Conclusion...)

>>I think that even though we agree on nearly every issue, the difference between us is that I believe changing in small ways for the good (e.g., cutting carbon emissions, even if we don't end up cutting enough to advert what is probably certain disaster) is worth doing, rather than doing nothing. So, I'm actually very much for incremental change that helps some people, rather than nothing or more active degradation of the world, etc.<<
I feel rather sure you're not trying to imply that I'm doing nothing, or believe in doing nothing, but that is the implication of how you phrase this. Be that as it may; incremental changes are great! Yay incremental changes! But my question is: do they work? Can they avert disaster? I view this as a scientific question, prone to analysis and evidence. I personally feel that the evidence in this case says "No." However, I don't advise doing nothing -- to the contrary! -- I advise doing more. We, all of us, should be spending more time trying to figure out what and how we can do more to change the political infrastructure around us. Dorian Warren, professor of political science at Columbia and whom I heard speak at the New Left Forum last week, assessed it thus: we spend too much time worrying about the person of the presidency/elective office and not enough on the infrastructure that constrains them. Obama, whether he wanted to or not, cannot go outside of certain constraints and still succeed (Dorian's example was the fact that to be an elected black senator in Illinois, you *have* to be a member of a black church in order to gain the aid of some institution with levers to pull within the political machine -- other ways to access the political machine are largely closed to you. And in Dorian, an African-American, and my opinion, it's simply a fact that many if not most black churches are going to have Rev. Wright-like rhetoric at some point. African American church rhetoric is simply not acceptable to mainstream America.) Anyway, Obama seems to have potentially leapt past this issue for now, but it remains to be seen what happens when he has to make his (admittedly eloquent, moving, and inspired) pitch on getting past race to loads of skeptical centrists and conservatives. ANYWAY, the same machine politics constrain Obama's choices in poverty, GCC, etc. -- so voting for him is inherently unlikely to accomplish the larger goals because it does nothing to change the political infrastructure of the United States.

I'm babbling again, but the basic point is this: a) as I've said, I don't believe the necessary changes are possible given the two-party system; b) there is, practically speaking, zero chance any national Democrat -- or Republican -- will actively help to break the two-party system (and if there were, we should vote for them) and reform into a better system; c) if a and b are true, then it is absolutely necessary that effort on incremental change go, for the large part, towards changing the two-party system!!!, which d) of necessity means *not* supporting Democrats who seem unlikely to do this, which means not supporting most of them.

I hardly think it's hopeless! I think staying within the two parties is hopeless, BUT I do believe it's possible for us, yes, incrementally to get out of this system by taking votes away from Democrats who do not go outside the normal box profoundly. The fact that *others* (including, perhaps, Becky) think that such a change is impossible, or that it would be impossible to do this through the strategy proposed, does NOT mean I advocate doing nothing or disparage incremental change. But history does show us, I believe, that the majority of important changes are drastic, not incremental, and accomplished (in democratic cases) not through presidencies, but through movements and after disasters (and as I've said, if you have a strong movement, the president seems almost irrelevant, i.e. Nixon on civil rights).

>>The only other point I must make is that we are both somewhat on the fringe of American politics and many of the policies we see as requisite are not passed by Dems or Reps because they do not reflect US public opinion.<<
That's the thing! Look at the polls! We are *not* on the fringe. Well, in the specifics perhaps we are. But broadly -- poll after poll after poll shows that people want more action on poverty, GCC, education and less spending on the defense budget. They also say they'd be willing to pay higher taxes for it -- it's the lobbyists, after all, who are most hyped on tax cuts, that's not what the average voter lists first on their list of priorities. The average person in US cares much MORE that their taxes are spent wisely (a difficult thing to do and to convince people you're doing, true) than about lessening taxes. For one example article on American priorities, see this. so I must again emphasize -- the problem is not rooted only or even primarily in the will of the American people, their priorities, or who has the presidency -- it's the system that creates a public that is commonly ignored. (Not to forget -- many, many Americans don't vote -- isn't it possible, just *possible* that a candidate who *really* seemed different would attract these predominately poor and minority voters? Isn't it likely that a politician who *would* have stood up in the scene from Fahrenheit 9/11 would do more to singly effect change in the US than several democratic presidents?)

What we are on the "fringe" of would be religious beliefs and civil rights, generally -- gays, guns and abortion as they say. Important issues, but also issues likely best addressed outside of a two party system.

>>I think you may be right about the current war funding, but when I hear people talk about it, I get the feeling that if Congress did step in and decrease funding in any way for the troops, they would lose all hope of re-election, which as politicians they certain don't want.<<
Considering that a) anecdotal evidence is unreliable and b) people quite certainly wanted more than the Democrats delivered (re-authorizing FISA for fuck's sake?), I don't find this convincing. Besides which, we can hardly admire Obama for his boldness in taking on the race discourse in a challenging way but condone him or his colleagues lacking exactly this boldness, innovation, or honesty on the war. And I really, truly don't believe that no one is clever enough to construct a way to change war funding that could be played as *directly beneficial* to the troops. The fact that the Republicans would gnash teeth and wrench hair no matter what just means that one may as well do *something real* rather than pitiful tokenism, which defintively ALSO makes people lose confidence in Congress.

>>this discussion. My basic point is that I don't see Nader as doing anything to truly help the cause of having alternatives to the two major parties, and perhaps he could do a lot more as a senator (had he been one in 2000, he could have stopped the coronation, like you said)<<
Well, for one thing, one of his points is that Congresspeople have a, what, 98% re-election rate? It's almost impossible to break in until someone dies. And even then, you need support from the Rahm Emmanuels of the Democratic elite, who, for example, seem to have encouraged supporting Dennis Kucinich's opponent in the Cleveland Democratic Primaries as punishment for Kucinich defying their desires to drop impeachment bills. This is not just notable because it was a punishment for DK; it would've been at least a mild punishment for the Dems themselves by losing the 12 years seniority DK had. 12 years is no Conyers, it's true, but if I recall the House puts some weight on seniority, and a freshman Congressperson from an incumbent district does indicate some loss of aggregate power. Nader, even if he had the temperament or charisma to run for Congress (which I will readily admit he doesn't, nor for president) would likely not make it past the gatekeepers.

>>or running for something other than President every four years.
Well, I could agree with you here, but the point of my strategy is not actually Nader, though he does make my strategy more tolerable. My historical-analysis based strategy is to avoid the "necessary" socioecological disaster that will bring about change by causing an electoral break large enough to shift the US political system. I'm fine with doing this incrementally -- and to me, part of this incremental fight is cashing out of the Democratic party (until and unless some candidate runs that I *substantively agree with at least in part on issues of empire, not just traditional issues* -- Obama's threatened bombing of Pakistan or Iran represent quite unacceptable variations from this to me, among others). I enjoy Nader because I can vote *for* him; I could take the tactic of some friends and very knowledgeable colleagues and write-in someone else, anyone else. I could take the implicit tactic of the poor here in the US and the explicit tactic of the poor and their supporters and liberals in many other countries and purposefully not vote at all, in protest. I prefer, though, to stand for something rather than just against.

I may consider voting for Obama this year, since, as I said, to my thinking failing is still failing, whether or not you tried half-assedly. I don't think presidential elections are the road to important change (for what it's worth, Dorian Warren, a bona fide political scientists, seemed to back this up in his analysis). Given that attitude, voting for O for the symbolic value of a black president and to appease my Dem friends is relatively low-cost as an individual act. But just as I have spent a *lot* of time considering Obama (if not as much as I should've I suppose), I would ask that my friends and colleagues at arms spend some time researching the history, evidence, arguments that compose my views. One quite certainly doesn't have to be a political scientist to achieve political savvy -- but one does have to study, just as one would study a science. And I guarantee you, historical analysis can be done by college-educated non-political scientists -- and even non-college-educated non-scientists! I really want to be clear that I mean this earnestly: supporters of incremental change, of ANY change, really need to make an effort to do this, BUT those of us with jobs in the "sitting-and-thinking" sector have, I think, a special obligation to do so. Avoiding this obligation to be informed and versed in history and politics is, I think, to block the very change we wish to be in the world. (I'm not accusing you of doing this, Becky -- of avoiding obligation; this is general soap-boxing writ large, especially brought out by some recent conversations I've had here at UM.) --J

Becky, Nader, Politics, and I should soooooooooo be in bed

A hasty posting for you.

Further debates with J-friend Becky on the presidential election, electoral politics, and history.

It's late (or early). Read. J go sleep.

>>I concede that every US president, Democrat or Republican, has continued the imperialist trend. I do not disagree that all have done a lot to cause harm across the world.<<
This is a bit of an understatement. And as I said, and you didn't address, as much or more of this was under the Dems as the Reps. And it's not just "harm"; it's thousands, if not millions, of deaths at the hands of our military or our proxies. This is hardly something to be brushed past.

>>I certainly agree that the Dems in Congress often seem to be spineless creeps who can't vote against anything, but I also must recognize that even if they had all moved to stop the Prez at any stage, they did/do not have the votes to override a veto.<<
True, but it's a non sequitir to maintain that they should therefore pass bills that are likely to be signed by the President because they give him everything he wants. The fact that he can veto bills, but that Congress controls spending, should make a Democratic-controlled Congress highly effective actually, being that they can cut off funding for any number of things -- it doesn't have to be funding for troops directly that they cut off. Or they could even be clever and transfer huge sums from the "emergency" bills put at the Admin's discretion and then spend it on the VA or research programs for the wounded vets. The fact that they can't override a veto doesn't mean that they're powerless, but that's how they seem to interpret it.

>>I do hold it against them that they voted for the Iraq war and the PATRIOT Act, but at least some of them didn't and some of them are now trying to do damage control on these issues and others.<<
Not to the extent that they've taken any political risks on it. You realize that the US public is more progresive on the war than the US Dem-controlled Congress? Surely, there's a better way to use that than to play out the clock and damage control until the elections. They've done precious little of substance to stop PATRIOT from continuing -- i.e. they renewed the warrantless wiretapping in FISA before they recessed last time! That was purely unacceptable and indefensible -- yet they've done it.

>>I'd like to note that there are few issues that the Democrats so shiningly do differ from Republicans on. Most obvious first: One is equal rights for all Americans, including homosexuals.<<
While this might actually appear blindingly obvious, I'd argue that as a party they're ineffective at the national level, and at the local level there are conservative libertarians who are just as fine with homosexual rights as liberals (with a variety of differences that vary from important to mundane, true). But a Dem congress that gives lipservice to gay rights but does little isn't particularly helpful. And as hateful as Scalia is, he did join the majority in striking down the anti-sodomy laws of (Texas?) last year.

>>Another is abortion rights (which may matter more to me, as a female, than you).<<
That's a bit condescending. It does matter to me as a progressive and a believer in women's right to control their own body. Of course, one must weigh various aspects here. Clarence Thomas, a reliable vote against women's rights if there ever was one, was appointed under a 57-43 Dem majority Senate, with 11 Dems voting to confirm (and the Dem-controlled committee not willing to stop his nomination from going to the floor despite the huge Anita Hill sexual harassment allegation, and being one of the few, if not only, Supreme Court nominees to have been not endorsed as "Qualified" by the American Bar Association). 2 Republicans, of of the 43, also voted against him.

>>A third is actually doing something about GCC.<<
Again, it depends on your perspective. I would maintain that given the fact the latest science alleges we have to make drastic changes in the next 5-10 years, and that the probability of drastic changes under an Administration of Dem or Rep. is approximately zero (and one must give McCain credit as being occassionally sensible about Global Climate Change), it seems to me that failing to stop a catastrophe through half-measures is not meaningfully discernible in outcome from failing through complete inaction. I'm willing to debate this point -- but that's my problem. Dem supporters never positively assert how we'll get from here to there under the "we've got to support person X" plan. And almost all agree that Obama is possibly the best Dem of a generation to get a chance at the presidency; yet he quite simply is not proposing the necessary measures to avoid catastrophe. (Not to mention that he has: said he's open to the possibility of bombing Iran, and Pakistan; said he's not for gay marriage but perhaps civil unions during his Senate election campaign where *he could not have lost if he wanted to against Alan Keyes* -- and if a politician can't speak for full-throated gay rights then, when running against someone polling like 4% of the vote, frankly, fuck them.) It may be "better" to fail through half-measures, but there really is a relatively firm estimate of what we absolutely need to go below in order to avoid a qualitatively different worsening of GCC; not reaching it is not reaching it, despite "good intentions." I frankly see no possible way to address this under a two-party system. Zero way.

>>A fourth is health care and a fifth is cutting taxes for the wealthy vs. giving services to the poor (you're likely to throw Welfare Reform in my face, right now, but if I remember correctly, most Dems were against it and the bill that passed came out of a Republican-majority Congress).<<
Well, health care seems likely to improve in the near future, but that remains to be seen (though it is true it is a primarily Dem issue, but again, if the results aren't seen on the ground, then clearly it's a waste). Cutting taxes/services etc etc they are quantitatively different, but not shiningly -- the poorest of Americans do pretty poorly under both parties. Granted that the poorest are the ones actually suffering and dying -- poverty has nominally decreased, but the "poverty line" is a ridiculous one so one needs to dig for the numbers, but they don't much change (I think) -- then the fact that those who are just getting by get by better or worse is far less important to me that the eventual addressing of the poorest. Welfare Reform was indeed passed in a Rep-controlled Congress, though it looks to me like more Senate Dems voted for it than against it, though "only" 15% of the House Dems did. (I would also point to the sad spectacle of disenfranchisement seen in Fahrenheit 9/11 when all that was needed as one senator to support the House procedures to stop the coronation of Bush and properly investigate, and not one of either party came forward.)

>>sanctions must be preferable to bombing the s*&t out of a country (or two) and then occupying it<<
I would tend to agree, but again, I feel things must be judged by results. Estimates imply something near 1/2 million child deaths due to the sanctions under conservative estimates; that would put total "excess" deaths likely in the 500 or 600,000 - 1,000,000 area (with some estimates around 1.5 million). While this is similar to the estimated "excess" deaths in Iraq right now, and Iraq's suffered huge infrastructure losses as well as life, the direct casualties are at least comparable -- something beyond unacceptable in my book for sanctions, which were about pride and exerting power, for which a million Iraqis had to die. The fact that bombs were not involved does somewhat little to move me.

>>I agree that it would be nice to have a leader who is not involved in any of the deplorable actions that our nation has undertaken in the last 100 years and one who is actually interested in solving some of the real problems in America today. However, I don't think Nadar is the guy to do it.<<
Well, I think Katha does make some fundamental errors, but I can see her points. (No one has any proof it is "vanity" -- that would require seeing inside his head -- and like I said, from all reports, he is just stubborn as a mother-fucker. Impugning his motives does little to advance the debate and expresses instead an understandable frustration. But it is a needless ad hominem.) There's a reason to documentary about was called "An Unreasonable Man." And of course, his net effects on electoral politics could be debated, since he has started several ground-based groups, Public Citizen chief among them, that have taken on some of these issues that he doesn't.

But in the end this is distracting from the point. He was and is right not to campaign in primaries with Kucinich because, as I've written in my blog before, Kucinich serves in the long-term to marginalize the left-prog arm of the Democrats. He gets their/our support, and then invariably throws his full support to the Dem. nominee without even publicly asking for concessions for the few delegates he gathers every 4 years. I love DK's policies and the voice he brings to primaries, but I've realized he's utterly ineffective -- moreso, actively damaging -- to progressive causes when he goes with the Dems, no matter who they support.

Which brings me to the last bits: one, I still have yet to see from anyone, including you, how voting for the Dems works to form any kind of long-term change. As I may have said, my analysis of history is that things change dramatically either a) after disaster or b) after a powerful ground movement takes off or c) both. The critiques of Nader on ground movements both hit and miss -- he, after all, didn't leave the Greens so much as they left him, and then worked hard on imploding; he became the Independent Party candidate, the party that brought for example Ventura to Minnesota (I may not've really agreed with "The Body", but he was different, I'll give him that). So Nader worked with and within parties -- but as the Greens have now realized, running *no* national candidate actually hurts their local efforts for a variety of reasons I won't go into here (not to mention their fucked up decision to run a candidate who more or less encouraged people to vote for someone else in 2004 and ended up looking like ineffectual fools). So Nader should be building, but it's not as if he hasn't tried recently, only to be rebuffed by people whose strategies were worse than his.

In any case, a ground-based movement on issues is not an apparent goal of the Dems -- indeed, I could name you 50 examples of them quashing real grassroots participation in the party. The Dems are active opponents of changing the status quo. One can debate about individuals, but stated plainly, as an institution the Dems will naturally block electoral reform (they just want to, *and have*, preferred re-rigging the system in their favor) just as much as Reps, and they will continue to ignore the base, blunting grassroots movements. Now, I am willing to listen to historically-grounded theories as to how supporting the Dems will get us past the impasses of the status quo, but it rather seems to me that supporters of the Dems are NOT thinking strategically, because they have never enunciated to me a plan of how this achieves long-term change, such that we don't keep killing foreigners and continue to dawdle about GCC. Nader may not be the answer (I don't support him so much because he's "the" answer but because I don't believe that one should vote for the Dems regardless of whether they end up supporting the policies they were elected to support, and I believe we need 3rd parties). Voting for Nader may not be the way to bring in 3rd parties. But, I think it's a start. Feel free to disagree -- but arguments with facts, evidence, and analysis are important parts of strategies, and I don't see it from Dem supporters. After all, is there *any* case you can imagine not voting for the Dem? If the answer is "probably not, barring something ridiculous and unforeseen" then voting is not an exercise in democracy because there is no real choice -- and Dems will use that to continue to not respond to the progressives, to "support" but not enact policies they were elected to support, until gays and lesbians still don't have equal rights, the environment is crap, and the other countries have enough of our shit and overrun us.

I really think that a widespread, and possibly, if unfortunately, violent global revolt against us is going to happen in the end anyway; I'druther try and change things for the better before then (and maybe even avoid it).

Debating Nader with J-Friend Becky

J-Friend Becky posted comments on the post about Nader's presidential bid and Tim Noah of Slate being "nice" about it. Despite the absolute need I have to be doing work, we're going to go through this a bit.

I agree that the two-party system does not serve US citizens’ (or the world’s) best interest. But, I still feel strongly that the two parties are NOT the same. If you want to be stuck in the ‘20s through ‘60s, that’s fine, but since Nixon, the Democratic presidents have led to more peace (think Carter - Israel and Egypt, Clinton – Israel and Jordan (and nearly Palestine)) and considerably less warfare (must I point out Bush – Iraq and Afghanistan??) than the Republican ones.

Who with the what now? Let's review: The Continuum has frequently linked to evidence that Democrats have caused more death than Republicans in the White House, and have not necessarily been better on "peace". To start with a less-than-war transgression, FDR was, perhaps, equivocal on allowing Jewish refugees to enter the US pre-WWII, for a variety of sensible political reasons, including threats of Congress to decrease quotas rather than increase. Understandable, yes, but also not necessarily admirable -- the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum notes that he basically continued the policies of his Republican predecessor Herbert Hoover. The even-handed-seeming judgment of the USHMM:

A balanced assessment of Roosevelt's policies with regard to Jewish refugees and the Holocaust must also take into account the overall historical context. Roosevelt was preoccupied by severe economic depression and war, and aware of isolationist, antisemitic, and xenophobic sentiments in Congress and among the American public. His own government bureaucracy was, on balance, an impediment to immigration on any large scale; this opposition reflected general popular sentiment. Though Roosevelt had real sympathies for the Jews and for others subject to Axis-sponsored murder and terror, his involvement in refugee issues and rescue efforts remained low. This reluctance to take political risks in refugee policy contrasts sharply with his boldness as a politician and leader in other spheres.

Building on this of course is the debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a notorious argument I won't fully engage here other than to say that the military necessity argument is still open to debate, the necessity of bombing Nagasaki questionable as well even accepting the necessity argument, the choice of civilian targets questionable as well, and of course, lastly, even assuming casualties from a ground operation, one must admit that this assumes it's better to kill their civilians (~220,000 deaths from the bombings within the following three months) than engage our military. All reasonable assumptions from the point of view of American Empire and jingoism and the rationale of the times (though it's not as if there weren't voices of opposition at the time including Gen. Eisenhower ("I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives"), General MacArthur (the highest-ranking officer in the Pacific Theater), Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), General Carl Spaatz (commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific), Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), Admiral Ernest King, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph A. Bard, and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet) (from Wikipedia, see also this site). Eisenhower, the next president after Truman, was Republican (and coiner of the phrase and warnings against the military-industrial complex), while Truman & FDR were Democrats. (There's also the debate on whether fire bombing was a valid tactic or war crime; one can easily say that the Germans did horrible things, which they did, but typically we don't accept horrific actions by those we hold in low moral regard as the high ground to start from.)

Going from this, there's Truman and the Korean War including the proposed use of nuclear weapons, and Truman bypassing a Declaration of War by Congress -- a precedent used to poor effect by our current president, though Truman was not the first to set it.

I could continue on, tiresomely, but, also tiresomely, B offers little evidence to back up her assertion.

Briefly: FDR & Carter: Carter had the foresight to let Iran's Shah seek medical treatment in the US, against the advice of the staff of his own Embassy in Iran -- helping to precipitate and the hostage crisis that most hurt his own career; support for the brutal dictator/crime family, the Somozas, in Nicaragua (this latter is an analysis of Carter's true colors from one of the most prominent US academic researchers of Latin American politics, James Petras); the Somozas were almost literally the Hitlers of Nicaragua, backed by US presidents, Democratic & Republican, and rose to power with FDR's practical blessing after assassinating his opponent Sandino; numerous Latin American interventions on this page, including also the School of the Americas, i.e. school for Latin American dictators to make friends with military strong-arm tactics backed by the US and to go back to become dictators of their countries supported by the US, founded under Truman; a number of horrible things done under Kennedy and Johnson, not just in Latin America but also in the happy funtime place known as the Vietnam War (continued by Nixon & Ford, but started by Kennedy & Johnson), also the Bay of Pigs, Papa Doc's Haiti, and almost WWWIII under Kennedy & Johnson; El Salvadorean Death Squads forming, undercutting UN conferences on racism and technology transfer, helping restore the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia after the Vietnamese had kicked them out, sponsoring genocide in Indonesia by selling them weapons while they wiped native peoples out, and loads of other fun times under Carter, the Sanctions of Iraq under Clinton that a) didn't weaken Saddam and b) led to the deaths of thousands of children -- not his fault, one says? But the policy was obviously not weakening him by the time Clinton left office, and many had died, yet he continued to support it -- he bears responsibility for not stopping a failed policy that also hurt people; and more.

That's a lot of babbling for one day. We'll take on some more points some other time. Suffice it to say, I think the Dems are responsible for a massive amount of war, death, imperialism, and destruction and that simply has not been rebutted with evidence. The fact that the Republicans were also bad isn't enough, and the death tolls under Dems are, I think, higher (though of course it all depends on how -- and who -- you count). I rather think it's naive to think any given Dem is going to change this horrifying trend of imperialism and massive disregard for the residents of other countries, and to me, to suborn or support anyone who is wrapped up in this endeavor -- especially those most deeply wrapped in it (which doesn't yet include Obama but would include both Clintons) is a moral compromise to be made only with the most extreme caution and reluctance. Support for the Democrats is support for death abroad, just as surely as it is for the Republicans. And never forget -- Democratic Congresses have repeatedly failed to stop preventable wars and conflicts, or even give token resistance -- cf. the IRAQ WAR. The resolution giving Bush the questionable power to do what he's doing now probably could've been stopped by Dems if they hadn't nearly-all voted for it; same with the PATRIOT ACT, and Jesus Christ, elected in 2006 on a wave of "we want change; we want out," what the FUCK-ALL are they waiting for and what have they done? They've back down on pretty much every fight. Picking your fights is one thing; throwing them is another.

Why, MSM, that's the nicest thing you've ever said!

Timothy Noah of Slate.com writes Lay off Ralph Nader in yesterday's Slate. In what is likely to be the nicest MainStream Media article about him for the next decade or so, Noah acknowledges that while he doesn't believe there are no pertinent differences between the two parties, he does believe that Nader believes it (and thus the talk about ego trips and vanity in terms of his presidential bids are a bit off). I agree with Noah, and I'm glad someone else has said it.

There are two things I don't think people understand about Nader (that I'm presuming I do):
a) if you do believe there isn't an important difference as I mostly do and he almost certainly does, then it isn't egomaniacal to keep running; it is more like Rudyard Kipling's poem "If": "If you can keep your head while all those around you are losing theirs, and blaming it on you... [you'll be a man, my son]." I guess I'm sensitive to this charge because I've been on the business end of it a couple times, just for believing in what I believed in despite the opinions of others around me. While it does take a certain amount of ego to believe you're right despite many, many detractors, it isn't about your ego. Egomania and vanity are about loving yourself excessively -- this is too often confused, I feel, with the passion and genuine belief and conviction in ideals that we praise in legend and song but seem to punish in real life.
b) If you believe in the evils of American Empire, including numerous deaths abroad (i.e., one million Vietnamese soldiers and 2-5 million civilian casualties compared to 60,000 US dead, courtesy largely of JFK and LBJ -- as I've said and presented evidence for before, Democrats have caused an equal or greater number of deaths from imperial ambitions in the past decades as have Republicans), and you believe the science on the environment (especially Global Warming), it is morally unconscionable to continue or compromise with the program of empire that has killed so many for less-than-noble reasons, and simply unwise and not in anyone's best interest to compromise on the environment, which simply put will not compromise with us -- we'll do what's right, in time, or we won't, and we'll make it worse for everyone. Of course, in case of increased environmental degradation the rich will still survive -- it's the poor who will suffer.

So Noah doesn't believe in Nader's uncompromising stance because it is simply not a politically realistic one. The question that I think is more pertinent though is, are politically realistic stances enough to stave off environmental and imperial catastrophe? I think the answer is no...

Side note: I had an extensive argument, well, with numerous people over this, but memorably with J-colleague EON. EON called my views that under a Dem OR Republican, environmental disaster seemed unavoidable and deaths from imperial efforts would continue practically unabated cynical. She also viewed as cynical (but didn't disagree with) my observation that the poorest and most discriminated-against Americans are among the groups who, for the most part, don't vote, likely because of the realistic analysis that the poorest's fortunes have changed little under whichever party. Both parties target the middle-class, with the poorest rarely seeing substantive help. Her response was whether I thought the comparatively small number of middle-class people who would be helped in a marginally better Democratic administration were unimportant -- I replied that they weren't unimportant, just not more important or even as important as the larger number of people who don't see material changes in their welfare under either party. I.e., the fore-mentioned poor and foreign nationals who, for example, starve to death under Democrat-imposed sanctions that do nothing to weaken their dictator. She continuously challenged my interpretation of history (i.e. that any President will do what they have to in order to stay in office, i.e. FDR & the New Deal occurring only with the genuine threat of rebellion by the poor and socialist upsurges in the 20s and 30s, and that political movements were more powerful, important, and largely independent of party, i.e. Nixon and Ford's civil rights work that they were forced to do and their arguably much better record on civil rights than JFK, etc.), without offering a competing interpretation. So, the question is, as I asked my dad the other day, why is it cynical to believe that the "Best of Two Evils/Obama's Not Evil" Plan will not work, and that the only morally and environmentally correct choice is to generate an alternative system -- that no two-party system is ever going to stave off environmental collapse or empire? I believe breaking the US' two-party system is doable, and real change within it is not. *I'm* cynical because I believe your method will fail but *my* approach that *you* don't believe in has a chance? What kind of weirdworld logic is that?

The Audacity to Agree with This Guy

It's useful that "The Audacity of... [blank]" can be used as a shorthand for talking about (satirizing) Barack Obama.

Rather than belabor the point that I'm not the possible 2009 president's biggest fan, I'm just going to link to a guy that summed up how I feel about Obama pretty succinctly.

Of course, many have pointed out that I'm a radical and so a mainstream candidate (i.e. anyone with any chance whatsoever of winning) is plainly never going to appeal to me. Be that as it may, the point of Professor Marc Lamont Hill still stands: Obama himself is packaging himself as the great bringer of change. He clearly doesn't represent a radical break from the status quo -- and if he's not a radical break (in the general, not necessarily progressive sense) then he can't represent fundamental change, hmm, ahh? It's sort of a logical impossibility. Of course, the continued argument is that one must kowtow to the status quo to be elected, and that the people aren't ready for a radical change -- and more pertinently, that presidents are not usually the instigators of radical change. Which simply makes me think, then:

a) change agents rarely kowtow to the status quo -- as I believe Frederick Douglas said (to paraphrase) -- "You cannot expect to applauded by the same system you are trying to oppose";
b) "the people" are never "ready" for change -- change agents build the movements that create this change that lurches society forward faster than it thought it could go (take your pick -- MLK Jr., Gandhi, Mandela, Castro, Guevara, and any number of other revolutionaries and visionaries you might name);
c) if presidents aren't instigators of radical change, then I can't really get all that excited about Obama -- keeping in mind that getting back to "normal" is still a world where Democrats have been as responsible for US foreign aggression, military intervention, deaths of foreign nationals, and maintaining US imperialism as Republicans -- I'm going to get excited about the next MLK, not JFK (i.e. the same JFK that brought us Vietnam and nearly WW III with the Bay of Pigs, for starters).

This attitude is perhaps that "negative attitude" I was accused of at my old job, when I felt I'd proved that the bodywash we wanted to design was chemically and kinetically impossible. I was told not to be such a pessimist -- but really, is pessimism the best way to describe "I think we're going to hit that mountain if we don't pull up?" Or is the optimism of "Pshaw, all we have to do is slow down a little bit and we'll be fine" really preferable?

Solidarity, on a belated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day note

Brought to my attention by J-friend Becky:

“It's one of the strangest things that all the great military geniuses of the world have talked about peace. The conquerors of old who came killing in pursuit of peace, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, were akin in seeking a peaceful world order. If you will read Mein Kampf closely enough, you will discover that Hitler contended that everything he did in Germany was for peace. And the leaders of the world today talk eloquently about peace. Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam, President Johnson talks eloquently about peace. What is the problem? They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.”

MLK Christmas Eve Sermon, 1967 .
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/12/276406.shtml

That about says it all.

The Hindu: A Brief History of US Imperialism

A great summary of the problems of US Imperialism -- which abroad has arguably been just as bad under Democrats and Republicans:

The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky

For The Hindu, Arundhati Roy recounts a brief history of US foreign aggression, adventurism, neocolonialism, and cruelty, through the prism of Chomsky's excellent construction (based on a term from influential journalist Walter Lippman's book in 1922) of Manufactured Consent: the sleight of hand that makes us think we really know what's going on in the world, and give our tacit and explicit consent to US policies that we would likely recoil from if we knew the truth of it.

Ask yourself this, in this holiday season: would you really, eyes wide open, happily and merrily trust a government that looked to "save" the Vietnamese while being so gleeful about their demise:

Here's an American pilot talking about the joys of napalm:

We sure are pleased with those backroom boys at Dow. The original product wasn't so hot — if the gooks were quick they could scrape it off. So the boys started adding polystyrene — now it sticks like shit to a blanket. But then if the gooks jumped under water it stopped burning, so they started adding Willie Peter [white phosphorous] so's to make it burn better. It'll even burn under water now. And just one drop is enough, it'll keep on burning right down to the bone so they die anyway from phosphorous poisoning.

So the lucky gooks were annihilated for their own good. Better Dead than Red.

And lest we forget, sadly forget: we've used Napalm, or perhaps more accurately, Napalm II in Iraq. As Marx said, History repeats itself, 1st as tragedy, 2nd as farce: We still have to melt the people to save the people, apparently. And do they thank us for it? Sheesh.

Merry Christmas, and an anti-imperialist New Year...

That's Right, Irrelevant Exuberance: Slate Writer Calls for Iraq Withdrawl

Philip Carter, Slate writer and correspondent for their "War Stories" column, and himself an Iraqi veteran, is calling for a withdrawal from Iraq. (Indeed, in May he outlined a plan for it.) I don't consider him to be the world's biggest dove, proof 1 of which might be the fact that he served in Iraq. You can object to war on principle and still serve in the Armed Forces, but that hardly qualifies you for pacifist-of-the-year. What I'm saying is, this is yet another call from someone who can hardly be characterized as a crazy left commie pinko effectively pro-terrorist weak-kneed girly man, but someone who a) seems to know what they're talking about and b) would likely support a politico-military "plan for victory" in lieu of withdrawing if, in their opinion, there was one. I've had something like this viewpoint for a while now, but it's nonetheless good to see it gaining steam, some years later than I'd've liked. (And while one may say, "Well, years ago we didn't know it would turn out like this," please see some of the other countries we've reconstructed post-WWII-reconstruction: Haiti (#1 poorest country in our hemisphere, very high intervention by the US for decades), Nicaragua (#2 poorest country in our hemisphere, high intervention, most of it illegal i.e. Iran-Contra), Afghanistan (not doing so hot), Guatemala (ended up helping a prolonged civil war continue with thousands of civilians killed), Greece, Brazil, Grenada, Libya, overthrowing the democratically elected Shah of Iran, and sundry other examples. In other words, there was no real reason to think intervention by the US was going to lead anywhere good in this case either. Go ahead, closely examine the history of US intervention -- results like those we've seen in Haiti, Nicaragua, and Iran are far more common than those for post WWII aid to Germany and Japan.

A distant cousin (but close childhood friend) once said that he wanted to go into the field of history to make sure that the US learned its lessons and never went completely the way of the British Empire through the course of making the same mistakes, for the love of God. He's since gone into a different area -- it doesn't seem like the slack's been taken up on this one, hmm?