AMERICAN POLITICS:

MORE ON THE MEANING OF OBAMA:

So far so good for the new American Administration. No major foul-ups. Smooth sailing as the world's media continues to give the new President the benefit of the doubt. How to see what is happening, especially for anarchists ? Here's one opinion from the recent pages of the Anarkismo site.

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Some remarks about Obama & Co.:
by Kevin S.
Some remarks about Obama & Co.I only have a few short words about the new president (!) Barack Obama. The inauguration of Obama signals a “new era” in American and world politics, certainly, and a definite improvement for everyone from the last eight years of Bush. (I personally voted Democrat for that very reason, given it did not exactly compromise the Revolution and anarchist abstentionism is rather irrelevant in the absence of a popular anarchist movement.) For that matter, he is better so far than anything the Democrats have thrown up since Kennedy, in which respect it is highly interesting to watch from outside. No question, Obama is an impressive politician who appears to be sincere. Nevertheless, he is a bourgeois politician like any other one, and it is foolish for “revolutionaries” to think otherwise. For anarchists, in particular, his administration represents little more than a “change” (!) of the guard which, in every other respect than his skin, is 100% typical of U.S. politics. What is extraordinary is not so much Obama himself—Obama as a politician—but rather the unusual political context. Obama stands out less for his personal virtue than for the unusual “movement” that gave his campaign so much power and appeal—Obama as a phenomenon.

That “movement” has been getting more and more ridiculous ever since he won the Democratic nomination, as people who only a few months ago hated Hillary Clinton as much as any Republican now “change” tone to accept as Obama packs his new cabinet full of old Clintonites (including Hillary herself). Despite such facts, the last couple months have seen such a gush of mass enthusiasm that one is even threatened with political “irrelevance” for not excitedly joining in on their sudden patriotic love-affair. What criticism does occur (even from some anarchists!) consists of “warning” followers that Obama must be “reminded” to keep his promises, as he is, in fact, fallible and needs some gentle nudging along the way to Change.

All that said, I have nothing personal against Barack more than any other bourgeois politician, and despite the ludicrousness of recent euphoria, there is no getting around the historical significance of Obama’s election, and the profound effect of the Obama movement. In many ways it is a typical case of political populism, but it is no less important for that, as it has inspired fresh political enthusiasm focused on the “new” direction of the country. In the present context of economic crisis and general reaction against free-market economics and Wall Street finance capital, there is a definite opening for popular pressure to put big business “back in line.” Furthermore, despite the super-enthusiasm for Obama, Americans (naturally cynical anyway, especially the youth who form the hardcore of Obama’s base) should have more than a healthy dose of skepticism about “our leaders” after the long Bush regime. Anarchists should be clear that this administration is fundamentally like any other—that who manages the bourgeois State is the bourgeoisie’s problem, and “the People” (i.e. the popular classes) should focus all their energies on our own struggles against the bourgeoisie (not pathetically “reminding” them to “keep his promises”).

There are lessons to be learned from the election as well. Most notable has been the youth mobilization, a factor which Democrats have long been trying tap into with only mediocre success. Obama, through a formidable mixture of personal style, rhetorical power and organizing skill, powerfully appealed to young people (some Democrats and many before non-voters), not only pending the election but during the nomination contest, drawing unprecedented numbers to the Democratic primaries in his support. Also unprecedented was the level of small-donations from lower-income people, in a campaign system traditionally funded by big corporations.

All this has led young and working-class voters who support Obama to think of him as one of their own, and even an illusion that they themselves are now in power or that a vote for Obama was a vote for them. In reality, he has simply perfected populist political techniques that have always been used in some degree by politicians, including ultra-reactionaries like George Wallace (or for that matter, going back to Andrew Jackson!). Regardless of how sincere an individual politician may be or of certain improvements they make, they are swindlers luring the masses into support for the ruling class of big business and political bureaucrats. Anarchists must work tirelessly to separate these politicians from their popular supporters, in order to build a popular anarchist movement against the capitalists and their State.
Article written for Anarkismo.net.

AMERICAN POLITICS:

MORE ON THE MEANING OF THE COMING OBAMA PRESIDENCY:

This is working out to be a continuing series as Molly present intelligent anarchist comment on what the victory of Obama in the US presidential elections means. I say intelligent . Don't expect to see a screed from 'Crimedink' demanding an escalation of show off militancy here. Let those poor pathetic wretches do what they do best- play the act for their purposes of a glorious "identity"- but I'm not involved.

The following from José Antonio Guitiérrez is from the Anarckismo website. Yes...Molly will eventually get around to offering her own opinion, but I'm still learning-especially about the reaction in the USA itself. The international perspectives that I have reprinted here are pretty much of the same viewpoint, with only subtle differences. Most of us outside the formal borders of the Empire are pretty much in agreement.The range of opinion in the USA is far broader in relation to their domestic policies. That's what I'd like to comment on later, but as a colonial I recognize the need for delay before commenting.

Anyways, here's Pepé's (as per his nickname)comment.

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Obamania, the factory of illusions... :
by José Antonio Gutiérrez D.
The following is a translation of an article originally written in Spanish for the issue 35 of Pueblos magazine. The original version of the article -in Spanish- will be published in the next weeks in their website http://www.revistapueblos.org/.This article deals with Obama and the hard task of restoration of the lost US hegemony and the false hopes his election has raised in many people, even from the left.

Obamania, the factory of illusions...

The victory of Obama in the US presidential elections has echoed all over the world through the mass media, which is trying to convince us that the most relevant single event in 2 million years of human existence had just taken place. In the meantime, delirious public opinion all over the world, has celebrated Obama’s victory in a way they would not have celebrated even for a new government in their own countries –something barely surprising if we take into account that decisions taken by the rulers in Washington DC bring a heavy load of consequences to the shoulders of millions throughout the five continents. In the eyes of the hallucinated mass, Obama represents a “dream” come true – what type of a dream exactly is something no one has been able to describe yet. The nightmare of Bush seems to have reached an end.
Rise and Decline of the New World Order
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the firm imposition of the so-called New World Order, the American Dream has taken the entire face of earth by assault. That dream, indeed, was soon to become a nightmare well before Bush Jr. made his way into the White House. Neoliberal orthodoxy spread like a plague in successive privatising waves all over the Third World, bringing with it hunger, unemployment and uncertainty for the lives of millions. Unrest grew until it exploded in the very heart of the empire during the WTO demonstrations in Seattle, 1999. But with the arrival of George W. Bush in power, and thanks to his anti-terrorist crusade in 2001, the nightmare adopted almost apocalyptic dimensions. The US displayed an unprecedented autism in the face of a world saying a clear and unequivocal “NO” to his War on Iraq, something said from the UN to the people on the streets all over the planet, including, of course, US streets. What followed is well known and there’s no need to go into details: a genocide that left hundreds of thousands of dead, millions of maimed and countless lives utterly shattered, only to satisfy the lust for “US dollars” of the arms and oil industry.

Therefore, the super-power which emerged with an aura of invincibility after the Cold War, sank into an unthinkable crisis at all levels – political, moral, diplomatic and also military, given its incapacity to defeat the Afghan and Iraqi insurgencies, who, in spite of their technical and numerical inferiority, demonstrated once again that the decisive factors in a conflict are never material things, but people. To make matters worse, the recent economic crisis has revealed the inner flaw of the single most advertised Washington dogma, that is, the almighty Free Market. With this new flank that has opened in the US's hegemony crisis, things could not get any worse. Pessimism and unhappiness have won over the hearts of US citizens (and those of all the rhapsodists of their political and economic model in the rest of the world), who have seen the American Dream crumble into pieces in front of their eyes.

With Obama, this nightmare seems to be coming to a timely end, according to opinion makers and hallucinating journalists. The brand-new president of the US rises up like a champion, with the aura of a real-time Messiah, with the mission to give the world and the US back their hope in the American Dream. Obama is portrayed as the climax of the struggle for "Negro" rights in the US, initiated during the times of Martin Luther King. Obama is portrayed as the quintessential representative of a supposed US democratic and humanist tradition that had a brief interruption of sorts with the Bush administration. Before Bush, US imperialism, according to these Obama supporters, seemingly did not exist, or it was a rather minor problem, while they insist that after Bush, the “benign” influence of the US will again manage to impose itself globally – unfortunately, memory is a virtue more often associated with elephants than with human beings.
The Obama Mirage
As a testimony of this worldwide illusion, it is enough to quote a headline on the US elections from the Sunday Times, on November 9th: “Welcome Back America” – a headline bordering on delirium and which, by the way, confuses a single country (US) with a continent (America), as is frequently the case in the English-speaking press (paradoxically, the very same press poked fun at the Republican vice-presidential candidate for exactly the opposite mistake, that is, confusing the African continent with a country). The subtitle is even more revealing: “The Bush years tainted America’s reputation in the eyes of the world. But Sarah Baxter, our Washington correspondent, who grew up in the US, says the victory of Barack Obama has revealed the nation as it really is”. There’s no stomach which can resist the test of checking all of the press on the matter without getting physically sick, but this is the tone set up for almost every single article written on the subject.

What is that “nation” really? Those of us who suffer from a kind of insomnia of the intellect and who like staying awake, we do not forget the countless acts of US aggression against Latin American people, the Philippines, nor the enthusiastic support given to all kinds of Third World dictators and to structurally genocidal regimes such as Israel or Colombia. Neither do we forget Vietnam or Korea, or the plundering of our natural resources and labour to which we’ve been subjected for a century. We can’t forget the nefarious effects of free trade policies, nor the economic sanctions imposed by the US on its contradictors. Everything mentioned certainly happened way before Bush, both with Republican and Democrat governments.

Can the peoples of Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan or Haiti expect their respective occupations to come to an end after these elections? Can future generations to come expect Obama to take some real action against Global Warming? Can the Latin American people expect interventionism in the forms of the Plan Merida and Plan Colombia to finish? Can the peoples of the world expect the White House to do something to solve their endless list of demands? Those who like waiting can remain waiting per saecula saeculorum – that is, for centuries to come. Obama does not seem to be in any rush to change the old order radically, but he does seem more concerned about adding a new facade to it. Something like new condiments for an old soup. His declarations on Latin America or Palestine, even when he was still a candidate, give us enough reasons to suspect that it wouldn’t be wise to expect any significant change [1]. The above-mentioned article reminds us that “President-elect Obama is about to inherit two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Osama Bin Laden is still at large (...) The threat of terrorism has not receded”. So it seems that the so-called War on Terror will last as an important element of the political agenda. Let us mention, by the way, that those chosen to be members of his cabinet do not allow for much optimism, except for the more gullible among us...
Restoring the declining US hegemony
But we who have got tired of waiting and waiting, and decided to put our hands to work in the making of a new world through the autonomous struggle of the people, we know that neither imperialism will end thanks to the unselfish actions of the imperialists themselves, nor exploitation will end thanks to those who get rich from it. We hold no false illusions – even if Obama were a convinced “progressive”, we know that, at the end of the day, US imperialism is a well-established State policy, springing from the entrails of the powerful elite’s interests [2]. It is no coincidence that in the US, “governments” are called merely “administrations” in accordance with their typically pragmatic spirit. It is impossible to be any clearer about their precise role...

With this I don’t want to insinuate that the arrival of Obama in the White House does not represent a different, new scenario for the people’s struggle, or even that there aren’t some humble chances of advancing with some demands – mainly because of the high expectations caused by Obamania. But from acknowledging this objective fact to seeing in Obama a sort of self-styled hero of “progressive” causes or even to holding illusions that this election means an end to the US condition as a world hegemonic power, there’s a big gap...

In fact, quite contrary to those who expect liberation to come from the White House, Obama has turned out to be the Yankee ruling class’ best chance to restore their lost hegemony. Imperialism will adopt a friendly face and will swing the carrot a little bit more than the stick. Again, we will all be good friends and will admire the Hollywood-manufactured country. As Sarah Baxter writes in her article in the Sunday Times, “America feels good about itself and its future again. Its moral standing in the eyes of the world rose overnight”. Another article, from the Irish Times (November 8th), written by another US rhapsodist called Colm Tóibín, adds: “All of us watched him [ed. Obama] with joy and pride, a feeling that this was an image of the US that could be shown all over the world, that the country could once more be ‘as a city upon a hill’, that some fundamental burden had been lifted, some ghost exorcised” [3]. After the series of defeats led by Bush Jr. and the isolation state where he took the US Empire, Obama is like a Prophet who will return its Messianic sense of purpose to the Chosen People and will open again those doors that had been shut, in order to deepen Yankee penetration into the rest of the world.

The magic in Obama is that he has renewed the illusions in a worn-out model that is losing ground on a daily basis to the economic crisis; a crisis which has brought socialism back to the table as an alternative (to Obama’s own shock). After all, electoral politics is nothing but a kind of huge factory of dreams, which is back at work, full speed ahead. That factory of dreams has its cultural foundations built over the bubbly contributions of Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Ford and Playboy to western civilization, to name but a few of the unquestionable contributions of Yankee culture to the world. And certainly the factory of illusions has also been built with the providential help of free trade and under the stern surveillance of the US Marines. Waking up once again only to realize how little things are likely to change with the new “administration”, will be a hard business. Even if some clueless people on the left want us to believe that what has just happened in the US was something slightly short of the socialist revolution.
José Antonio Gutiérrez Danton

10 de Noviembre del 2008
[1] It is very telling that the candid enthusiasm with which the so-called “progressive” governments of Latin America received the news of Obama’s victory. The presidents in the frontline of this motley collection of governments were eager to congratulate the US president-elect. Lula asked for the new government to work closer with Latin America (as if half a century of politics by remote control through the US embassies wasn’t enough!) and Chávez offered his hand to the very same person who treated him as a “manageable” threat during his campaign. Evo Morales asked him in vain to lift the Cuban embargo, when Obama himself was clear enough on his intentions to keep it in place despite his claims to be willing to engage in direct diplomacy with the Caribbean nation. Out of this motley collection, a conservative and fearful Uribe in Colombia is trying to explore ways to guarantee a Free Trade Agreement with the man who opposed it, arguing the systematic murder of trade unionists in that country. Also, Uribe wants to guarantee similar levels of military cooperation as with Bush through Plan Colombia, at a time when the counter-insurgent tactics of the Colombian government are coming under serious fire due to human rights violations.

[2] In a previous article, “Obama and Latin America, a friendly imperialism?” (http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=9080) I have already gone into Obama’s programme towards Latin America, as it was revealed in a public meeting with the Cuban community in Miami, and there I already warned about the false illusions held by a left that still expects change to come from above and through elections, when Obama was chosen as the official democrat candidate. I believe this article remains relevant in its fundamentals.

[3] Let us remember that the metaphor of the “city upon the hill” was proclaimed with true utopian fervour by the Puritan John Winthrop in 1630, when he referred to the founding of their new colony, the seed destined to sprout later as the US.
Related Link: http://www.revistapueblos.org/

AMERICAN POLITICS:

HOWARD ZINN ON THE OBAMA VICTORY:

Here's yet another libertarian comment on the Barack Obama victory down USA way, this time from the homepage of libertarian socialist historian Howard Zinn. The essay below was originally published in the French newspaper L'Humanité.

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Howard Zinn article written for l'Humanité
OBAMA’S HISTORIC VICTORY:

by Howard Zinn
Those of us on the Left who have criticized Obama, as I have, for his failure to take bold positions on the war and on the economy, must join the exultation of those Americans, black and white, who shouted and wept Tuesday night as they were informed that Barack Obama had won the presidential election. It is truly a historic moment, that a black man will lead our country. The enthusiasm of the young, black and white, the hopes of their elders, cannot simply be ignored.

There was a similar moment a century and a half ago, in the year 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Lincoln had been criticized harshly by the abolitionists, the anti-slavery movement, for his failure to take a clear, bold stand against slavery, for acting as a shrewd politician rather than a moral force. But when he was elected, the abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips, who had been an angry critic of Lincoln’s cautiousness, recognized the possibility in his election.

Phillips wrote that for the first time in the nation’s history “the slave has chosen a President of the United States.” Lincoln, he said, was not an abolitionist, but he in some way “consents to represent an antislavery position.” Like a pawn on the chessboard, Lincoln had the potential, if the American people acted vigorously, to be moved across the board, converted into a queen, and, as Phillips said, “sweep the board.”

Obama, like Lincoln, tends to look first at his political fortunes instead of making his decisions on moral grounds. But, as the first African American in the White House, elected by an enthusiastic citizenry which expects a decisive move towards peace and social justice, he presents a possibility for important change.

Obama becomes president in a situation which cries out for such change. The nation has been engaged in two futile and immoral wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the American people have turned decisively against those wars. The economy is shaken by tremendous blows, and is in danger of collapsing, as families lose their homes and working people, including those in the middle class, lose their jobs, So the population is ready for change, indeed, desperate for change, and “change” was the word most used by Obama in his campaign.

What kind of change is needed? First, to announce the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and to renounce the Bush doctrine of preventive war as well as the Carter doctrine of military action to control Mideast oil. He needs to radically change the direction of U.S. foreign policy, declare that the U.S. is a peace loving country which will not intervene militarily in other parts of the world, and start dismantling the military bases we have in over a hundred countries. Also he must begin meeting with Medvedev, the Russian leader, to reach agreement on the dismantling of the nuclear arsenals, in keeping with the Nuclear Anti-Proliferation Treaty.

This turn-around from militarism will free hundreds of billions of dollars. A tax program which will sharply increase taxes on the richest 1% of the nation, and will tax their wealth as well as their income, will yield more hundreds of billions of dollars.

With all that saved money, the government will be able to give free health care to everyone, put millions of people to work (which the so-called free market has not been able to do). In short, emulate the New Deal program, in which millions were given jobs by the government. This is just an outline of a program which could transform the United States and make it a good neighbor to the world.
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(written for l'Humanité in Paris)

AMERICAN POLITICS:

STILL MORE ON THE ELECTION OF OBAMA:

As part of her effort to present intelligent anarchist and left socialist comment on the recent American elections Molly presents the following from the Anarchist Federation Blog via the A-Infos site. The AF is the British section of the International of Anarchist Federations.

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Britain, Anarchist Federation on Obama - the Second Coming?:

Below is a collectively produced statement on the election of Barack Obama by Manchester AF.

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Make no mistake, Barrack Obama's victory in the United States does not mean black liberation any more than Margaret Thatcher's government was a victory for women's liberation. Neither does it herald a new dawn for the world.

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We firmly expect that the 130 million Americans who voted in the election will soon be sorely disappointed. Obama looks good because he is young, handsome and above all not George Bush. It was becoming clear to many in the USA and the world that George W stole the 2000 elections by fraud and cheating. The wars he has led the US into are increasingly unpopular with over 4000 troops dead and 100,000 injured in Iraq alone.

The press almost all supported him in the election, even the normally right-wing Murdoch empire. Obama is presented as a Mr Clean who will sweep away the stench of corruption that haunts US politics. They say he will save the world from the current economic crisis, the “credit crunch” and recession. Mr Clean he may be, but he spent over $200 million to get elected – more than $40 million a month. Clearly that money is not coming from the poor – a quarter of African Americans live below the poverty line - or the quarter of the workforce in low paid jobs in a country where the minimum wage is $6.55 an hour (just over £4). It is coming from wealthy donors like bankers and financiers Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and companies like Microsoft, whose founder Bill Gates is worth $45 billion.

Clearly these press barons and big companies are going to expect something in exchange.

We expect the wars to continue. Although he promises to pull out of Iraq eventually, the US will need to keep the government there friendly. Troops will be replaced by advisers and security guards, who are in reality heavily armed thugs. He promises to send yet more troops into Afghanistan. Although we expect him to close the hell that is Guantanamo Bay, we doubt he'll do much for the 2.5 million (mostly black and Hispanic) Americans who rot in prison. We doubt the USA will stop bankrolling the racist Israeli regime and its persecution of the Palestinians.

Most of all capitalism is in another of its economic crises. Obama has the backing of the rich and powerful because he will be better able to inflict pain and hard times on the working people in the States and the rest of the world. He has been elected not to bring change. He will stop change happening.

Elections come and elections go. The faces of our rulers come and go. But the need to struggle and fight against the bosses and the state goes on every day. Whoever the Americans voted for, the government got in. We need to be building a fighting alternative, a massive wave of class struggle to finally sweep these parasites off the face of the earth.

AMERICAN POLITICS:

WHAT WILL OBAMA DO ON FOREIGN POLICY ?:

The following article from the COAT site tries to extrapolate what the foreign policy of an Obama Administration will be like, given the past pronouncements of the President-Elect. The answer...not that much different from what has gone before. No doubt the "tone" will be different, but the substance will remain the same- the preservation of empire. One has to, of course, take Obama's past positions with the usual wheelbarrow full of salt reserved for the promises of any politician, but there is no reason to doubt that the next US Preident is any more dishonest than others. Thus, what he has said before is likely to be, in general terms, the way he will conduct himself in office. What will this be like ? Read on.

The cartoon above, by the way, is from the Tales of the Iraq War blog by the Brazilian cartoonist Latuff. Also needless to say Molly doesn't agree with the following author's hope that the inevitable disappointment with Obama in power will lead to a "Third Party" in the USA. However realistic or unrealistic this hope may be it is something quite different from what Molly hopes for. It also leads to the inevitable question..."Would a 'Third Party' be any different in power ?". The experience of us colonials who have multiparty systems suggests otherwise.

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A Rough Guide to Obama, on $2.3 billion a day*:
By Richard Sanders, coordinator, Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT)

Did you know that President-elect Obama:
**voted for every one of President Bush's Iraq-War funding increases?
**believes Bush's "surge" in Iraq has "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams" and has proclaimed his "absolute" belief in the "War on Terror"?
**criticized the Iraq War because it is "unwinnable," not because it is illegal, immoral and has killed one million Iraqis?
**will probably leave 140,000 private contractors (mercenaries) and as many as 60,000 to 80,000 regular US troops in Iraq?
**praised President Bush, Sr., and the 1991 Gulf War saying: "I think that when you look back at his foreign policy, it was a wise foreign policy. In how we executed the Gulf War.... I think George H.W. Bush doesn't get enough credit for...his foreign policy team and the way that he...prosecuted the Gulf War. That cost us $20 billion dollars. That's all it cost. It was extremely successful."
**is willing to bomb Iran and that he won't rule out a first strike nuclear attack?
**wants to send an additional 10,000 US troops to fight the war in Afghanistan?
**wants to expand the Afghan war with unilateral air strikes to bomb Pakistan?
**supported Israel's war against Lebanon?
**supports Ballistic Missile Defense?
**favours military expenditures on warplanes that he says "provide the backbone of our ability to extend global power."
**voted for the Patriot Act II, the Wall Street bailout, building a border wall with Mexico and immunity for corporations that conducted electronic eavesdropping on Americans?
**wants continued sanctions against Cuba?
**called President Chavez an "enemy of the US" and wants sanctions against Venezuela?

Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other examples from Obama's statements, his voting records, his financial backers and his selection of advisors and staff that expose very regressive positions on foreign policy and domestic issues. (Check out the links to an initial list of articles below.)

Some rationalize their support for Obama by saying he is less pro-war than McCain or Bush. Others may argue with contention that Obama even is pro-war. At different times, and with different audiences, Obama has taken completely contradictory stands on many important issues. How do we interpret this behaviour? Are we believe all of his progressive-sounding rhetoric on "hope" and change," and simply ignore as inconvenient his many "right-wing," pro-war positions?

As Obama himself has said in his latest book The Audacity of Hope: "I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." As James Krichick said in the New Republic, "Obama is, in his own words, something of a Rorschach test."

Sam Smith puts it this way in an article called "Can we talk about the Real Obama now?":
"Obama has left the same kind of vacuum. His magic, or con, was that voters could imagine whatever they wanted and he would do nothing to spoil their reverie. He was a handsome actor playing the part of the first black president-to-be and, as in films, he was careful not to muck up the role with real facts or issues that might harm the fantasy. Hence the enormous emphasis on meaningless phrases like hope and change."
(Undernews (online report of the Progressive Review), November 5, 2008.)

Obama's rhetoric on the Iraq War is a case in point. Many mistakenly see him as as anti-war "peace candidate" who will pull the US military out of Iraq. Unfortunately, the truth about his position on this subject is far more complicated.

"In an interview with Amy Goodman, Sen. Obama stated his intention of leaving 140,000 private contractors in Iraq because “we don’t have the troops to replace them.” He also stated the need to keep an additional “strike force in the region … in order to not only protect them, but also potentially to protect their territorial integrity."
Matt Gonzalez, "The Trail of Broken Promises," CounterPunch, October 29, 2008.

Colin Kahl, the coordinator of the Obama campaign’s working group on Iraq policy wrote a paper for Center for a New American Security, saying that between 60,000 and 80,000 US troops should stay in Iraq until the end of 2010.(James Kirchick, "Who has Obama's ear?," Politico, April 15, 2008.)

Another insight into Obama's position on the Iraq war is revealed in his appointment of Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate. Stephen Zunes, in "Biden, Iraq, and Obama's Betrayal," (Foreign Policy In Focus, August 24, 2008) says that

"Obama's selection of Joseph Biden as his running mate constitutes a stunning betrayal of the anti-war constituency who made possible his hard-fought victory in the Democratic primaries and caucuses. "The veteran Delaware senator has been one the leading congressional supporters of U.S. militarization of the Middle East and Eastern Europe, of strict economic sanctions against Cuba, and of Israeli occupation policies.

"Most significantly, however, Biden, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the lead-up to the Iraq War during the latter half of 2002, was perhaps the single most important congressional backer of the Bush administrations decision to invade that oil-rich country." (Emphasis added)

Leaving aside the Iraq War there is plenty for peace activists to be concerned about in Obama's overall agenda for the US military. For example, as Obama wrote in an article called "Renewing American Leadership":

"To renew American leadership in the world, we must immediately begin working to revitalize our military. A strong military is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace. . . . We must use this moment both to rebuild our military and to prepare it for the missions of the future. . . . I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened. We must also consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability..."
(Foreign Affairs, May 31, 2007.)

And, here's what the official website of the Obama-Biden campaign says about what they'll do to when elected to "rebuild the military for 21st century tasks":
***Expand to Meet Military Needs on the Ground: Barack Obama and Joe Biden support plans to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 soldiers and the Marines by 27,000 troops. Increasing our end strength will help units retrain and re-equip properly between deployments and decrease the strain on military families.
**Review Weapons Programs: We must rebalance our capabilities to ensure that our forces have the agility and lethality to succeed in both conventional wars and in stabilization and counter-insurgency operations. Obama and Biden have committed to a review of each major defense program in light of current needs, gaps in the field, and likely future threat scenarios in the post-9/11 world.
**Preserve Global Reach in the Air: We must preserve our unparalleled airpower capabilities to deter and defeat any conventional competitors, swiftly respond to crises across the globe, and support our ground forces. We need greater investment in advanced technology ranging from the revolutionary, like Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and electronic warfare capabilities, to essential systems like the C-17 cargo and KC-X air refueling aircraft, which provide the backbone of our ability to extend global power.
**Maintain Power Projection at Sea: We must recapitalize our naval forces, replacing aging ships and modernizing existing platforms, while adapting them to the 21st century. Obama and Biden will add to the Maritime Pre-Positioning Force Squadrons to support operations ashore and invest in smaller, more capable ships, providing the agility to operate close to shore and the reach to rapidly deploy Marines to global crises.
**National Missile Defense: An Obama-Biden administration will support missile defense, but ensure that it is developed in a way that is pragmatic and cost-effective; and, most importantly, does not divert resources from other national security priorities until we are positive the technology will protect the American public.
A 21st Century Military for America

Particularly revealing is the section above called "Preserve Global Reach in the Air" which concludes with the assertion that the US needs to invest in multi-billion dollar warplane programs because they "provide the backbone of our ability to extend global power."

The idea that Obama is anti-war is a powerful myth that will impede the peace movement's ability to mobilize opposition to the inevitable continuation of US militarism and imperialism. President Obama may then prove to be more of an obstacle to peace than a true agent of change moving the US economy away from a world in which corporations seek profit through predatory wars. Obama's deceitful image as peacemonger will allow him to get away with policies and actions that would not be countenanced for an instant if they had come from the likes of McCain or Bush. This blindspot for Obama's pro-war agenda will not only hamper the ability of US peace activists to speak out, organize and protest, it will also help to dampen the efforts of many others around the world.

There is a potential silver lining to this situation. As President Obama and his government begin to carry forward their efforts to "extend global power," liberal activists will hopefully begin to concede that Obama is not the peace president they had expected him to be. As the campaign hype and honeymoon fade away, disappointment in Obama's rhetoric and hypocrisy may transform into a realization that the US is in dire need of a strong "third party" to give voice to the aspirations for peace held by so many millions of Americans. Perhaps this disillusionment in the Democratic Party will begin to open up new possibilities for the election of some future US president who really does stand for peace. But don't hold your breath!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

* Under President Obama, the US military budget may well be spending about $2.3 billion a day. The 2008 US military budget is $696 billion. Obama says he will increase military spending and will add 65,000 troops to the Army and 27,000 Marines. Every increase of 1,000 army troops adds about $2 billion per year, while every addition of 1,000 Marines adds $1 billion/year. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,327888,00.html That means Obama's proposal could add $157 billion, bringing the total to $857 billion per year, which means about $2.3 billion per day.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Resources:
^African People's Solidarity Committee, "Obama Exposed" and "Obama Fact Sheet"
^"Quentin Young, Early Supporter of Obama, Now Disappointed and Saddened," Corporate Crime Reporter, January 28, 2008.
^Shaun Booth, "Barack Obama: A Hawk in Dove’s Clothing," Political Lore, January 18th, 2008.
^Michel Chossudovsky, "The Democrats endorse the 'Global War on Terrorism': Obama 'goes after' Osama," Global Research, August 29, 2008.
^August Cole, "Obama Adviser Doesn't Expect Defense Cuts," Wall Street Journal, October 3, 2008.
^Robert Dreyfuss, "Obama's Evolving Foreign Policy," The Nation, July 1, 2008
^Tom Eley, "Barack Obama and the War In Iraq," World Socialist Web, February 14, 2007.
^Glen Ford, "Obama surrenders on military spending," The Progressive, January 15, 2008.
^Chris Floyd, "The Bagman Cometh: Obama Embraces War Criminal's Endorsement," Empire Burlesque, October 19, 2008.
^Chris Floyd, "Surge Protectors: Obama Embraces Bush-McCain Spin on Iraq," Baltimore Chronicle, September 5, 2008.
^Joshua Frank, "It Could be a Long, Hard Struggle: A Look Under the Hood of an Obama Administration," November 6, 2008.
^Matt Gonzalez, "The Trail of Broken Promises," CounterPunch, October 29, 2008.
^Glenn Greenwald, "The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending," Jan. 2, 2008.
^William D. Hartung, "Dems: What about the Military Budget?" Foreign Policy In Focus, February 21, 2008
^Joseph Gerson, "Obama's Foreign & Military Policies: Old Wine in a New Bottle?" Common Dreams, April 23, 2007.
^Margaret Kimberley, "Freedom Rider - Obama's Iraq Fairy Tale," Black Agenda Report, July 9, 2008.
^James Kirchick, "Who has Obama's ear?," Politico, April 15, 2008.
^Tom Mackaman, "Democratic keynote speaker Barack Obama calls for missile strikes on Iran," World Socialist Web, October 1, 2004.
^Pam Martens, "Obama's Money Cartel: How Barack Obama Fronted for the Most Vicious Predators on Wall Street," CounterPunch, May 5, 2008.
^"Sen. Barack Obama Speaks Out on the Iraq War, Race, Hillary Clinton and Pastor Jeremiah Wright," CNN Larry King Live, March 20, 2008.
^The Obama Iraq Documentary: Whatever The Politics Demand, John McCain's team. (This contains dozens of contradictory statements made by Obama regarding various aspects of the Iraq war.)
^Ralph Nader, "Open Letter to Senator Barack Obama," November 3, 2008.
^Johnny Peepers, "Obama’s Pro-War Chief of Staff: Rahm “Rahmbo” Emanuel," Dillsnap cogitations, November 2008.
^St. Pete for Peace, "If you voted for Obama, this is what you voted for," November 2008.
^News release, Greens Warn Antiwar Americans Against Wasting Votes on Pro-War Democrats, US Green Party, July 28, 2008.
^Kevin Zeese, "Is It Time for the Peace Movement to Start Protesting Senator Obama?," Voters for Peace, April 2008.

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Over the past year, John Pilger has written numerous columns critiquing Obama hawkish policies, including:
1)Bringing down the new Berlin Walls
13 Feb 2008 ... One of Barack Obamas chief whisperers is Zbigniew Brzezinski, architect of Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan, which spawned jihadism, ...
2)The danse macabre of US-style democracy
23 Jan 2008 ... Barack Obama is a glossy Uncle Tom who would bomb Pakistan. Hillary Clinton, another bomber, is anti-feminist. ...
3)In the great tradition, Obama is a hawk
12 Jun 2008 ... The foregone nomination of Barack Obama, which, according to one breathless commentator, "marks a truly exciting and historic moment in US...
4)The invisible government
16 Jun 2007 ... Obama writes that while he wants the troops home, We must not rule out military ...
5)Obama, the prince of bait-and-switch
24 Jul 2008 ... Having declared Afghanistan a "good war", the complicit enablers are now anointing Barack Obama as he tours the bloodfests in Afghanistan ...
6)A murderous theatre of the absurd
11 Sep 2008 ... At home, Obama offers no authentic measure that might ease Americas grotesque inequality, such as basic health care. ...
7)The new world war - the silence is a lie
24 Sep 2008 ... The change candidate for president, Barack Obama, had already called for an invasion and more aircraft and bombs. The ironies are searing. ...
8)The diplomacy of lying
23 Oct 2008 ... The beatification of President Barack Obama is already under way; for it is he who challenges America to rise up [and] summon the better ...

#######
Free sample copy: If you live in Canada and haven't previously received a free sample copy of COAT's magazine, Press for Conversion!, then just send your name, street address and postal code to overcoat@rogers.com and we'll mail you a complimentary copy.

AMERICAN POLITICS:

OBAMA AND EMPIRE:

The dust surrounding the recent American election is beginning to settle, and while the world still seems caught up in their love affair with the new President-elect a few critical voices are gradually emerging. Here's one from the pages of the British LibCom site, concerning the (un)likelihood of any fundamental "change" in American policies under an Obama administration.

........................

Obama: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss:

There seems to be quite a lot of genuine excitement in the English language media following the election of Barack Obama. Various commentators are talking about it as if it signifies real change within America and even the world, rather than just the end of another of America’s four yearly electoral circuses.

If one were to believe the media it, would appear that after eight long years of Bush America has undergone a real transformation, the first Black President, and a commitment to real radical change.

It sounds like it is too good to be true. Obviously it is.

So what can we expect from the new regime in the US. Let’s look at foreign policy first. Of course, it is possible to look back at the last Democratic Government in the US, that of Bill Clinton. This was a government that fired cruise missiles almost indiscriminately at its enemies. From factories producing medical goods in Sudan to residential areas in Iraq, not forgetting to fire a few at Afghanistan in-between. We call also mention the two air bombardment campaigns in ex-Yugoslavia, which was referred to at the time as Humanitarian bombing. We could also point to his continuation of US sanctions against Iraq, which according to UNICEF caused the deaths of 500,000 Iraq children, the fact that he was the first to introduce the ideological basis of Bush’s terror campaign. It was Clinton who first used the terms ‘state sponsor of terrorism’ and 'rogue state'. There was also the little matter of an invasion of Haiti…

But let’s not damn Obama on the past record of his party in Government. Let’s allow the man to speak for himself. In April 2007 in his first major foreign policy speech, Obama stated that "We must lead by building a 21st century military.... I strongly support the expansion of our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines.” One would wonder what he wants nearly 100,000 new soldiers for. Well, when he was asked on Fox News last month about the possibility of bombing Iran he stated that he “would never take a military option off the table.” He also wants to put an extra 10,000 troops into Afghanistan where he said that President Bush had ‘responded correctly’ in fighting the ‘good war’, a ‘good war in which between 20,000 and 60,000 civilians have been killed. He also believes that Pakistan is “the right battlefield ...in the war on terrorism”, and has threatened to attack it.

To be honest all this puts him right at the centre of the Democratic tradition from Kennedy and Johnson in Vietnam via Clinton in Somalia, Kosovo and Iraq.

And what does he offer to the working class in the US? One of the things that was clear about the election campaign was that despite the background of the deepening crisis neither of the candidates had any proposals to deal with the crisis. This is because neither of them had any answers to offer. Nor are there any answers to offer. All that the politicians can hope to do is to bring in austerity measure to attack working class living standards. The first rule of the crisis is always that the ruling class will try to make the working class pay the cost of it. For all his words about ‘workers rights’, he must still implement austerity programmes. There can be no difference between the results of the economic programmes of different parties. Indeed generally there is no difference between the actual programmes.

So what Obama offers is more war abroad, and more attacks against the working class at home. Everything must change so it can stay exactly the same: meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

AMERICAN POLITICS:

MORE ON THE MEANING OF THE OBAMA VICTORY:

The debate about what the Obama victory means has begun amongst the left and its anarchist subsections. One caveat here, the emperor has been acclaimed, but he hasn't yet been crowned, whatever the cartoon from Latuff above may imply. Yes, the outgoing emperor is trying to bask in reflected glory by being as accommodating as he can. One can only imagine what his true feelings are. I'm inclined to give John McCain the benefit of the doubt when he silences his ill tempered supporters on election night as he concedes defeat, but Bush's entire history leads one to suppose that pure hypocrisy is behind his recent good graces. McCain has at least a smidgen of honour, and one can excuse him by saying that he fell into bad company and is now reverting to his better self. I have to doubt that George Bush has a better side. The United States of America, however, has more nuts per square foot than any other piece of real estate on Earth, and one hopes that Obama won't come to a tragic end before his coronation.

Speaking of nuts, as I predicted the shady side of American anarchism is beginning to spout their nonsense, peppered with laudatory reports of silly vandalism done around the elections. Then it shades into such whoppers as claiming that "popular movements can't influence government". This, of course, is silly and very much self defeating as it leaves little to be done besides proclaiming one's superiority. But that is what such people are interested in anyways. The majority of the American movement, however, are realistically struggling to come to terms with what the recent electoral events mean, and the nuts are a minor current. Molly has recently been reading a very interesting back and forth over at the Anarchist Black Cat discussion board on 'President Obama', and she can recommend it highly for intelligent presentation of different views.

A couple of commentators on this board, amongst them Larry Gambone of the Porkupine Blog, have mentioned the "emotional" implications of the Obama victory. Yes, indeed he will "govern from the right" and "speak from the left", but his victory does indeed open up an optimistic time that has opportunities available for those capable of seizing them. One of my favourite observations was made by Mr Beer N' Hockey over at his blog. Beer's blog is a wonderful, playful antidote to those sickened by political correctness, and it is one of the few that Molly always finds worth reading for the sheer entertainment value. What Beer observed was that the "party" is front of the White House was a spontaneous outpouring, very unlike the setup event in Chicago where they "sold tickets" for God's sake. Media reports described the crowd calling/yelling for the immediate eviction of the present denizen of the White House. This is a mass movement unlike any seen in the past few decades in the USA, and it is indeed spontaneous, uncreated by the plotters of the left or the social democrats of the Democratic Party. There are a lot of IOUs out there, and there is a possibility of collecting on at least some of them. Once more, as I have expressed here before "revolutions are not created by revolutionists". They happen, and the proper course is not to try and create them but to understand and influence them.

But, as I said, I intend to present some intelligent libertarian comment on the recent election. Here from Z Communications are three such essays. If you want the full nitty gritty subscribe to their news service.

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Doubtful about Presidents; Optimistic about Us:

By Peters, Cynthia

Cynthia Peters's ZSpace Page

Writing for Time Magazine on November 5th, Joe Klein called Barack Obama's victory a sign that our country is a "younger, more optimistic, less cynical" place. "It is a country that retains its ability to startle the world -- and in a good way, with our freedom." The Boston Globe editorialized that the new president will usher in "a decisively different direction" for the United States.

What is it that liberal elites are celebrating exactly? I suspect they are more or less happy with the core values of the U.S. political and economic system, and they are just relieved that it's dressed in nicer clothes, comes in a multicultural wrapping, and will continue its forward march in a more congenial, multi-lateral manner.

Many of the liberal elite are excited about Obama's victory today because of the more palatable manner in which he will forward the elite's agenda.

But even left-of-liberal Michael Moore writes about crying tears of joy and relief. Progressive friends all over town are waving enthusiastically and giving me the thumbs up. I smile back. It's not that it's hard to muster the smile. I understand people feeling uplifted by Obama's historic election win. For all the reasons that many progressives have recited - the important symbolism of having an African American in the nation's top office, the repudiation of the Bush/Cheney agenda, the populist-leaning domestic agenda, etc. - I agree the outcome of the election is as positive as it could be given the constraints of the current electoral system.

But I wonder: is there something wrong with me? Must I insist on seeing the massive structural injustices in Obama's agenda? Must I focus on his hawkish foreign policy? Must I go around reminding everyone that his victory will only be as meaningful as we make it? That it's unlikely he'll enter office as a centrist reformer and emerge as a leader who is willing to address structural injustice?

Many people I talk to are impatient with this line of thinking. They think it is pessimistic.

They think I'll die young if I keep thinking such negative thoughts. They think I should un-furrow my brow and revel in this great American moment. They think it's okay to believe in Obama. One person said something exactly like that: "Oh let me feel happy about this. It feels so good to have someone to believe in."

But wait. It's not that I don't have someone to believe in. I do. I believe in the power of movements. I believe in all of us.

When I was in Brazil in 2002, and Lula of the Workers Party, was on the brink of winning the presidency, I had the privilege of talking with members of the Landless Workers Movement. They said they would be happy if Lula won, but they had no illusions that it would change the essential nature of their work. On the contrary, Lula would be pressured by the banks and by international financial institutions to carry out their agenda. Only a sustained grassroots movement would keep him from succumbing to those pressures. They were hopeful that the Workers Party would win, but they wouldn't put their faith in what Lula would do once he was in office. (NB!!!!!-Molly)Instead, they were investing their hope and energy in movement building, knowing that strong movements would be the only way to ensure what Lula would do once he was in office.

I remember seeing Howard Zinn speak to an audience in Cambridge some months before the Iraq war started. An audience member asked, "What do we do if Bush invades Iraq?" "That's not the question to ask," Zinn pointed out. "The question to ask is: what are we going to do to make sure he doesn't invade Iraq?"

That's ultimately an optimistic stance. It sees grassroots power as a match against corporate and imperial power. It's a harder row to hoe. It takes longer than an election cycle. It involves mobilizing a truly democratic base to become powerful enough to actually determine what institutions look like. Most importantly, it's a stance that projects the possibility of real change over the long term and does not settle for nicer versions of rotten institutions. To the person who is desperate for something to feel good about: Why do you need Obama for that? History shows over and over again that reform happens when people at the grassroots organize together, take risks, and refuse to obey. You could have been feeling good about that all along. You could have been believing in yourself. I do.Cynthia Peters is the editor of The Change Agent.
View online here, sustainers can comment: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3673

Obama Mania?

By Albert, Michael

lMichael Albert's ZSpace Page

Some things are obvious. Electing a first African American President is world historic. The electorate bending toward sanity, eloquence, and dignity, rather than a death spiral into moronic depravity is positive, too, even if mostly because the alternative is a condition of abject horror.

Realignment of various voting sectors and undercutting market mania are very positive, too.The fact that Obama's campaign was unprecedentedly efficient and effective is certainly worth learning from. An electoral facility is not, however, a progressive credential - more or less like being a prisoner of war for bombing defenseless peasants isn't a credential for wisdom or civility.The fact that Obama's support, particularly among young people, creates an incredibly hopeful opportunity to be boldly progressive, or even radical, is also good, but not conclusive. Put differently, the potential in Obama's victory does not imply there will be great actualization in its aftermath. We will almost certainly see reforms reflecting the catastrophic need to escape economic woes by regulating markets and dealing with health care, but that could be the end rather than beginning of Obama's positive agenda.

If we rely on Obama to actualize the larger hopes of the election, most likely he will not. Indeed, the only positive signs that he will are that he has the competence, confidence, and chutzpah, as well as a sufficiently large organized base of support. In contrast, the negative indicators that he won't are that nothing beyond vague rhetorical flourishes indicates that Obama has seriously progressive views, commitments, connections, or inclinations, and that the systemic pressures on him and aggressive channeling of his time and thought will be enormous.My guess is, sadly, that within one week, literally one week, Obama's staff and cabinet choices will make decisively evident that without mass activism forcing new outcomes, change will stop at the surface.

I fervently hope I am wrong.Our task is in any event to press Obama mightily, starting immediately. For the moment, when folks who support him are interviewed and connect Obama to the civil rights heritage and even let their rhetoric expand in their understandable glee establishing expectations that would require a serious left shift and struggle, it pushes prospects well. But I don't think that will be remotely enough if Obama appoints traditionally oriented folks to his staff, revealing not boldness in pursuit of change, but aloof disregard for the passions he has aroused in pursuit of business as usual, thereby quickly undercutting euphoria.

Part of the Way with BHO? Maybe we can have that much, at best. But ironically, if that slogan does against the odds make some sense in coming weeks and months, there will still be a strong analogy to the "Part of the Way with LBJ" formulation of decades back. It was LBJ's populist inclinations around civil rights and modest redistribution that engendered the slogan in the first place. It was LBJ's pursuit of annihilation in Indochina, however, that blew the slogan's sentiment to shreds. Imagine Obama expanding war in Afghanistan or reneging on getting out of Iraq, even assuming he is, personally, truly inclined to populist domestic change, and you can see a road to repression and resistance.

But, one other thing about our response to Obama and the election seems pretty clear, and I think quite important to note, even if my worst fears about the limits of Obama come true. Leftists of all kinds need to avoid acting as though this election was run of the mill, or especially that those who voted for Obama were deceived or naive, or that those who are elated by seeing him in office are fools. This election was not run of the mill. This election was, in fact, historic as no other election I have ever encountered, regarding black people's and other minority's hopes and aspirations, regarding the electoral map, regarding escaping Republican nightmares that could have gotten infinitely worse, regarding the possible emergence of young people as an active political and social force, and regarding the coming struggle over whether cynicism will continue to drain activist prospects, or, instead, inspired by rhetoric and excitement and then angered by rejection, masses of people ironically intoning "yes we can" will persevere even against Obama Administration opposition to win what we had hoped to more easily gain.

The election isn't, however, as best I can now see, a new society or even remotely a road to one - instead, we will have to work for that likely without Oval Office aid - but the fact that this election wasn't everything, or even what some people hoped, doesn't mean it was nothing. And now comes the truly hard question - racism. What does having a Black President mean about racism? Again, some things seem relatively obvious. The impact on young people's self image, hopes, and images of others, will be enormous and even taken all alone this one gain is worthy of the joyful tears many are shedding. To not understand that fact, or to deny that fact out of some odd inability to acknowledge progress, is blockheaded and extremely callous.

Barack Obama is a very unusual and inspiring orator/candidate - but he is not Martin Luther King Jr. Yet the idea of King running for President forty years ago was absolutely unthinkable. So we have progressed. And that is no small thing. Jesse Jackson wasn't modestly standing in the park in Chicago and weeping for no reason or because he is deluded. Denying progress is utterly ridiculous both in its divorce from reality and in that it shoots ourselves in the head - after all, where did the progress come from if not social movements? Does that mean there is no racism anymore? No. But it does mean that the ideological trappings of racism and many of the structural supports, as well, have been over years and years, seriously undermined and in some instances even obliterated.

What mainly remains are three things. First, residual largely material deprivations that owe their origin to the past but that are reproduced simply due to their existing, even without any racist sentiment or laws coercing the outcome. Second, I suspect there remain some basic underlying institutional features which tend to regenerate racial hierarchies still. And third, and now, at last, least consequential and likely to further decline, admittedly, still many people who retain racist personal inclinations, particularly in the South, but not alone there by any means.

Look at the maps showing the change in vote level for the Democrat between 2004 and 2008, virtually all over the country, and the trend is pretty clear.What has happened, in other words, is that the massive courageous and intense efforts of Blacks in struggle, plus their allies, have undermined many people's racist beliefs to a very considerable extent - though not completely.

Those struggles have also eliminated at least a considerable part of the laws and other structures, overt and covert, that daily reinforced horrible racist hierarchies. Those struggles have, however, not gotten, I suspect, to the deepest institutional heart of racial hierarchy, nor have they eliminated all the bad views and habits from all people's personalities, either, of course, nor eliminated all the residual disparities in income, wealth, and position.

But, still, the change that has occurred is enormous and if efforts persist, calmly but steadfastly, and if they go from past logics built on symptoms to finally addressing the deepest underlying structures and relations, whether in families, community definitions, or whatever else, the scourge of racism may be all but eliminated as a powerful drag on people's lives in the years ahead. I would never have said anything like the above forty, thirty, or even just twenty years ago, nothing like that, short of seeing revolution on the horizon - but the simple fact is, you can't have a society that has a black president who polled better among whites than his opponent in most states and better then any white Democrat in decades in virtually all states, and still claim it is the days of fiercest virulent racism.

It just isn't...though yes, until we eliminate the most basic underlying causes, those horrible days could return.Am I in fantasy land either regarding my doubts (despite my hopes) about short term presidential agenda or my hopes about longer term electoral and racial implications?

I don't think so. Here is a letter a friend of mine received from a public school teacher in Boston...

I know I can get down in the dumps about my job, but not today.

Today was a great day to be a teacher.After staying up into the deepest hours of the night, agonizing, waiting and celebrating, I had to drag myself out of bed this morning. My early morning drive to school today was a little fuzzier than usual... so fuzzy that I decided to stop on the way for a cup of coffee and ditch my usual green tea start to the day(ICH says Molly, what an unwitting confession of one's class and cultural position).

Little did I know that I would need no amount of caffeine to get me through the day.The excitement started as soon as I entered my building.� It turns out that a small group of students were in the building before school even started to decorate our hallways with Obama posters. They had made photo copies of Barack Obama's face under which they wrote one word: "President".

By the time the rest of the student body had arrived our whole school had been plastered with these signs. At 7:14 am, the hallways at my school looked very familiar: crowded, hectic and loud. Only this morning, students weren't ignoring their teacher's requests to get to their homerooms because they were too busy gossiping about shoes or TV last night or each other. Instead, students were simply too busy to get to class on time because they were all talking politics with their friends.

It was stunning to overhear conversations between 8th graders that included words like: electoral votes, democracy and ballot. And it wasn't just a few kids - it was all of them.

Felix, the loudest, tallest and coolest 8th grade boy in homeroom 8F came into our room with 6 Obama buttons on his sweatshirt. And as if this wasn't enough, he set the school trend for wearing the Obama posters that were once hanging all over the hallways. One minute he was asking to borrow some tape and the next minute the Obama print outs are all over his (and then all the other boys') torsos.

Meanwhile I looked around my homeroom and had a shocking realization: this is a room filled with 13 year olds and all of them are in a good mood. But knowing how much their moods fluctuate during the course of a day, I was sure that by last block the excitement would have subsided.

I was wrong.I picked up 8C from lunch and on the way back to class I had to remind Lexxi that it wasn't appropriate hallway behavior to chant, "Obama, Obama, Obama" as loudly as she could. Now I knew my lesson on chemical formulas would be a hard sell for such an over-stimulated and over-tired afternoon crew so I decided to make them a deal.

"If we get all our work done this afternoon, we will spend the last 20 minutes of the day watching Obama's victory speech. However, if we don't work efficiently we won't have enough time."

When else would this be a successful incentive for adolescent children: if you work hard, i'll let you listen silently to a grown-up give a long speech about our political process. I couldn't believe it worked, but it did. The class only got off track a couple of times and I was easily able to re-focus them by providing one simple reminder: "President Obama would want us to get our work done." (OH MY GOD-Molly)

As promised, at the end of the period we closed our chemistry books and tuned in to hear our next President give his victory speech. It didn't seem to matter that it was the last 15 minutes of the day ... the first bell even rang and no one even packed up their things. Not only did they listen to Obama's speech intently, but a few times they began cheering so loud I had to pause the speech and remind them that a class was taking place next door.

You remember this part of Obama's speech last night: "This victory is not my victory. It's your's." To this, Vianca (one of my most chatty and challenging girls) said out loud: "Yeah, it's my victory!" I looked around at the room of my 28 students - all of whom are people of color - and I saw the future teachers, doctors, artists and Presidents of this country. I almost started crying all over again.�
View online here, sustainers can comment: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3674/
Looking Under the Hood of an Obama Administration :

By Joshua Frank

Joshua Frank's ZSpace Page

Tuesday's celebration hangovers have finally started to wear off, and the pieces are beginning to fall into place. Change will be coming to Washington in January, but it is difficult to decipher what form it will take.

Early clues, however, suggest that Barack Obama's administration will prove unlikely to alter the fundamental political machinery that has led us into war and economic turmoil. Below is a brief summary of Obama's potential choices for a few key roles in his administration.

***Chief of Staff

Obama's key White House position will go to Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois. While Emanuel knows his way around the corridors of Washington, qualifying him in the traditional sense, this alone doesn't mean he's the guy you want drawing up Obama's policy papers day after day. For starters, Emanuel is a shameless neoliberal with close ties to the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), even co-authoring a strategy book with DLC president Bruce Reed. Without Emanuel, Bill Clinton would not have been able to thrust NAFTA down the throats of environmentalists and labor in the mid-1990s. Over the course of his career, Emanuel's made it a point to cozy up to big business, making him one of the most effective corporate fundraisers in the Democratic Party. He's also a staunch advocate of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories. Emanuel's shinning moment came in 2006 as he helped funnel money and poured ground support into the offices of dozens of conservative Democrats, expanding his party's control of the House of Representatives.

Emanuel, who supports the War on Terror, and expanding our presence in Afghanistan, worked hard to ensure that a Democratic House majority would not alter the course of US military objectives in the Middle East.In short, Rahm Emanuel is not only a poor choice for Obama's Chief of Staff; he's one of the least progressive picks he could have made. While he may have decent views on abortion, tax policy, and social security, Emanuel's broader vision is more of the same: war and corporate dominance.

***Treasury Secretary

For arguably the most important position Obama will be appointing, the President-Elect may pick well-regarded economist Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve under Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Volker is one of Obama's closest economic advisors and is thought to be the top-choice for the position of Treasury Secretary.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Volker, in an attempt to cut inflation, dramatically raised interest rates, which helped the elite maintain value in their assets but strangled the working class as credit dried up. In his book, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, David Harvey writes that Volker personified one of the key facets of the neoliberal era.

"[Volker] engineered a draconian shift in U.S. monetary policy. The long-standing commitment in the U.S. liberal democratic state to the principles of the New Deal, which meant broadly Keynesian fiscal and monetary policies with full employment as a key objective, was abandoned in favour of a policy designed to quell inflation no matter what the consequences might be for employment. The real rate of interest, which had often been negative during the double-digit inflationary surge of the 1970s, was rendered positive by fiat of the Federal Reserve. The nominal rate of interest was raised overnight ... Thus began 'a long deep recession that would empty factories and break unions in the U.S. and drive detour countries to the brink of insolvency, beginning a long-era of structural insolvency'. The Volker shock, as it has since come to be known, has to be interpreted as a necessary but not sufficient condition of neoliberalism."

In supporting Henry Paulson's bailout package, Volker would not re-regulate the banks nor provide more power to shareholders, he's simply carry on one facet of neoliberalism:

* tightening federal budgets which inevitably will put great budgetary pressure on federal agencies.

Another potential pick for the post is Robert Rubin, who served under Clinton in the same position and is currently Director and Senior Counselor of Citigroup. Rubin played a key role in abetting another neoliberal objective: deregulation. Where Volker was hung up on economic austerity, Rubin pushed for more deregulatory policies that ended up shifting jobs, and entire industries, overseas. Rubin even pushed for Clinton's dismantling of Glass-Steagall, testifying that deregulating the banking industry would be good for capital gains, as well as Main Street.

"[The] banking industry is fundamentally different from what it was two decades ago, let alone in 1933," Rubin testified before the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services in May of 1995.

"[Glass-Steagall could] conceivably impede safety and soundness by limiting revenue diversification," Rubin argued.

While the industry saw much deregulation over the years preceding these events, the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act of 1999, which eliminated Glass-Steagall, extended and ratified changes that had been enacted with previous legislation. Ultimately, the repeal of the New Deal era protection allowed commercial lenders like Rubin's Citigroup to underwrite and trade instruments like mortgage backed securities along with collateralized debt and established structured investment vehicles (SIVs), which purchased these securities.

In short, as the lines were blurred among investment banks, commercial banks and insurance companies, when one industry fell, others could too. Robert Rubin is in part responsible for supporting the policies that pushed us to the brink of a great recession. When the subprime mortgage crisis hit, instability and collapse spread across numerous industries.

Another name that is in the hunt for the top spot is Lawrence Summers, who served during the last 18 months of the Clinton administration. Summers is greatly responsible for expanding Rubinomics and is credited by many for the collapse in the derivatives market, which later imploded the housing market.

***Defense Secretary

While Obama's choice for this important role is speculative, quite a few fingers are pointing to Richard Holbrooke. After Gerald Ford's loss and Jimmy Carter's ascendance into the White House in 1976, Indonesia, which invaded East Timor and slaughtered 200,000 indigenous Timorese years earlier, requested additional arms to continue its brutal occupation, even though there was a supposed ban on arms trades to Suharto's government. It was Carter's appointee to the Department of State's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Richard Holbrooke, who authorized additional arms shipments to Indonesia during this supposed blockade.

Many scholars have noted that this was the period when the Indonesian suppression of the Timorese reached genocidal levels.During his testimony before Congress in February 1978, Benedict Anderson of Cornell University cited a report that proved there never was a United States arms ban, and that during the period of the alleged ban; the US initiated new offers of military weaponry to the Indonesians at Holbrooke's request.

Over the years Holbrooke, who is philosophically aligned with Paul Wolfowitz and other neoconservatives, has worked vigorously to keep his bloody campaign silent. Holbrooke described the motivations behind his support of Indonesia's genocidal actions:

"The situation in East Timor is one of the number of very important concerns of the United States in Indonesia. Indonesia, with a population of 150 million people, is the fifth largest nation in the world, is a moderate member of the Non-Aligned Movement, is an important oil producer -- which plays a moderate role within OPEC -- and occupies a strategic position astride the sea lanes between the Pacific and Indian Oceans ... We highly value our cooperative relationship with Indonesia."

Other foreign policy advisors may also include the likes of Madeline Albright, the great supporter of Iraq sanctions, which killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Madeline Albright, when asked by Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes about the deaths caused by U.N. sanctions, infamously condoned the deaths.

"I think this is a very hard choice," she said. "But the price--we think the price is worth it."

Samantha Power, that great cheerleader for humanitarian intervention, also has Obama's ear and may even entice him to put U.S. forces in Darfur.

"With very few exceptions, the Save Darfur campaign has drawn a single lesson from Rwanda: the problem was the US failure to intervene to stop the genocide. Rwanda is the guilt that America must expiate, and to do so it must be ready to intervene, for good and against evil, even globally. That lesson is inscribed at the heart of Samantha of Power's book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.

But it is the wrong lesson," writes author Mahmood Mamdani in the London Review of Books. As Mamdani continues:

"What the humanitarian intervention lobby fails to see is that the US did intervene in Rwanda, through a proxy ... Instead of using its resources and influence to bring about a political solution to the civil war, and then strengthen it, the US signalled to one of the parties that it could pursue victory with impunity. This unilateralism was part of what led to the disaster, and that is the real lesson of Rwanda ... Applied to Darfur and Sudan, it is sobering. It means recognising that Darfur is not yet another Rwanda. Nurturing hopes of an external military intervention among those in the insurgency who aspire to victory and reinforcing the fears of those in the counter-insurgency who see it as a prelude to defeat are precisely the ways to ensure that it becomes a Rwanda."

Other names in the running include John Kerry, who as many know, ran an antiwar campaign for president in 2004. A full supporter of the War on Terror, with a hard-line on Iran, will certainly not alter the U.S. relationship in the Middle East. Regarding the Department of Defense, it looks as if Robert Gates will still control the top spot, with no alterations made to the DoD or its inflated budget.

***The Next Step

While the election of Barack Obama is a blow to George W. Bush-Republicanism and a gain for racial equality in this country, it is in many ways only a symbolic victory. The future of the U.S.'s foreign and economic agenda will continue to be saturated with ideologies and individuals that are directly responsible for our current predicament, both in the Middle East and domestically. Celebrating the end of the ugly Bush era is one thing. Celebrating the continuation of their policies with a different administration in the White House is quite another.

With these prospective appointments, Obama seems to be moving backwards to Clinton time. This may be sufficient change for some, but it far from a progressive push toward social, economic, and environmental justice.For significant change to happen, the kind that is needed in order to mend the wounds of the Bush years, we have to put down our Obama signs and force Congress and the new administration to end the wars in the Middle East, and push for regulating the financial industry while providing true universal health-care and economic safety-nets for all Americans.

Given the make up of his potential advisors, we're in for a long uphill battle. So let's drop our illusions and start organizing, beginning with a discussion of what "organizing" even means in today's political climate.

Joshua Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice and author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the brand new book Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland, published by AK Press in July 2008. He can be reached at:

brickburner@gmail.com
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