Is Cuba Detente a Diversion to Protect Bush II & Co.?

Here are, in my opinion, the two most important words which may help explain the timing of the White House’s “new course” on Cuba: Torture Report. Yes, while the announcement was a very welcome, long overdue and not far reaching enough development, its timing is what makes me wonder most. It is likely no coincidence that Obama announced this historic policy correction within less than two weeks of the release of the US Senate report on CIA torture during its “global war on terror.”

As it became clear that the progressive left was not going to let it blow off and, instead, the calls for prosecution of Bush II & Co. were getting louder, particularly on the world stage, Obama and his advisers must have felt they had to go nuclear and bring something out with enough impact that would hopefully short-circuit the moral revulsion that has been ensuing in civil society. And thus comes Cuba to the rescue, the proverbial ace up the President's sleeve and perhaps the oldest, most indefensible and longest standing policy of the US government since WWII. In short, the timing of the policy shift on Cuba might be seen as a diversionary tactic aimed at deflecting the mounting outrage over the release of the US Senate Torture Report.


In this light, it is possible that despite the protestations of the usual suspects, Senators Menendez (NJ) and Rubio (FL), the incoming Republican congress might not end up fighting the White House on Cuba as much as they say they will as they may be getting some pressure from above to let this one go. Although Obama was supposedly working on this for quite some time, chances are that he would not have unveiled this important policy shift right before an incoming Republican congress without some kind of assurance from Republican quarters. It is the conjuncture of the damning Torture Report that perhaps made this policy shift finally a reality.

Given how long Obama had been working on this deal, it is clear that he intended it to be a major part of his legacy along with the ACA. And just like with the ACA – when he basically gave away the barn to get assurances from Big Pharma, Big Health and Big Insurance that they would not stand in the way – he must have sought assurance from high Republican echelons (Bush II?, Rove?) that they would not stand in the way of the Cuba deal. The perfect bargaining chip was the Torture Report: let the wolves do their work on Bush & Co. or throw them a bone to try to placate them.

Let me be clear on this. While Bush & Co. may be perfectly ok with what they did, they must also understand that the only thing that stands between them and the pitchforks is Obama. It is he who stands in the way of fulfilling US treaty and US law obligations to prosecute these egregious crimes by saying that we must look forward and not backward and thus it is he who is getting now the most pressure to drop this hypocritical and no longer tenable stance. Thus, it is not far fetched to think that after the Senate revelations he may have brokered some kind of deal with Bush II & Co. so that they could help him help them.


In regard to Cuba we must also be clear about what this policy shift really amounts to. What we are dealing with is simply a change in tactic, not strategy. Regime change is still the operative word in Washington. When Obama said that the embargo had failed it is because it failed to accomplish the intended goal which is the overthrow of the Cuban revolutionary government. Thus, in a example of realpolitik brinkmanship, Obama decided to try a different approach: substitute economic strangulation for economic persuasion – to put it euphemistically – and hopefully all the NGOs that come along with economic cooperation (see Ukraine).

In conclusion, it is likely that the Cuba announcement was a bone thrown not only to the US left, but at world civil society which has been consistently and overwhelmingly voting against the US embargo for decades. In particular, it is an acknowledgement or the growing isolation of the US in the Western hemisphere – the recent invitation of Cuba to the OAS being an example. And so the Faustian bargain may be that the US left and world civil and political society got Cuba in exchange for leaving Bush II & Co. alone, at least for a while, while Obama gets to look good on the world stage after the black eye of the Torture Report and yet another disappointing Climate Summit. Given that the Pope was in on the Cuban deal – it was another Pope also with cultural credentials who spearheaded the Warsaw Pact – it is clear that the brokering was done at the highest geopolitical levels. Will it work? Possibly. So far at least Obama managed to shift the media discourse and next week is Christmas and then new year. Happy holidays.

US Upping the Ante On Syria

This is a showdown between Obama and Putin. Putin has the upper hand because Obama and his backers want war but he's alone out on a limb and vulnerable. He has the might and the power to do as he pleases. Will he enter Shakespearean territory and go full tragedy or will he take the hit and risk becoming irrelevant for the rest of his term? No easy way out. Powerful stuff. Horrible for the people on the ground looking up at the sky.

The goal of the US is clear, to get a legally binding trigger that would justify a military attack. Considering how low the credibility of the US is in regard to evidence, such a trigger should be rejected a priory.

We were lucky once with Kennedy, let's not test the other possible outcome.

The Ignorant Hubris of US Officials

Like a despondent child after being caught doing something she wasn't supposed to do, former NSA chief Michael Hayden argued that the agency's spying on European Union officials, both in the US and Europe, should not be seen as a big deal because European governments are doing the same thing. In addition, Hayden stated that non-US citizens are not protected by the the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution and thus they can be spied on at will.

And so, panicking US officials quickly threw their European allies under the bus in order to shield themselves from criticism. This shouldn't come as a surprise, especially given the revelations by Der Spiegel, from which we learn that the US doesn't really see much of Europe, with the exception of the United Kingdom, as an ally – the leaked documents reveal that most EU nations, such as Germany, are viewed as "3rd party foreign partner[s]."

What is particularly interesting about these disclosures is that they reveal a not so thinly veiled cultural prejudice on the part of US officials. In fact, the only countries that are viewed as privileged allies are english speaking and primarily anglo-saxon: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. In addition, the lame defense offered by Michael Hayden shows either his complete ignorance or blatant disregard for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which, as an international treaty, supersedes the US Constitution. Article 12 states:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Aside from showing how the US government sees foreigners as second class human beings, the debate that is currently taking place inside the United States on this issue is also showing the world the US's self absorbed insularity. Completely oblivious of the fact that the entire world is now watching us and waiting for an explanation, if not an apology, US president Barak Obama put his foot in his mouth by saying that the NSA spying program "does not apply to U.S. citizens, and it does not apply to people living in the United States.” As if telling the rest of the world "we only spy on you" is supposed to make them feel better.

In this regard Arthur Silber argues that this state of affair is all by design and, in fact, it should not come as a surprise to anyone who truly understand how this world works; I emphasize this because it is not the only manner in which it can work, even though those who would like to keep it this way tell us otherwise. And so, it is now in the open that those managing the American Empire follow the Machiavellian maxim according to which, if one must choose, it is better to be feared than loved. This, of course, also applies to American citizens, which is why Obama and clapper lied when they said that the NSA does not spy on Americans, and also why their minions came out saying that it was legal after the lie was exposed.

Yet, Macchiavelli also argued that one "must endeavour only to avoid hatred" and this, unfortunately, is an aspect where the US is failing spectacularly and which, in the end, may bring its own undoing unless, of course, we all perish in the process as the hubristic managers of the US imperium may still choose to bring everyone else down with them.

Imperial Realism and Its Liberal Advocates

It is a sad spectacle to see how many so-called liberals defend Obama's naked imperialistic policies in the Arab world on the grounds that they are simply being realistic. The charge of "realism," is a notorious propagandistic technique aimed to discredit those who have different views without dealing with the substance of their argument. Yet, the fact is that even a cursory perusal of the facts reveals how there is nothing realistic about supporting dictatorial, oppressive governments in the Arab world until it is simply no longer tenable.

Today, the failure of American self-interested foreign policy in the has been exposed for what it is in the Arab world. Obama was caught with his pants down when he supported Mubarak against the majority of the Egyptian people, up until it was crystal clear that his regime was not going to survive. The same is true for Hillary Clinton, who backed the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia until its fall. The point being that because of Wikileaks and the Arab spring, people all over the Arab world fully understand, in case they didn't do so before, that the U.S. is in the business of promoting policies which are antithetical to the interests of the vast majority of the people in the region. This, incidentally, is perfectly understandable, since if these people could have a say, they would throw us, and our invading armies out in a nanosecond.

In this regard, Jill Stein represents the very change that Obama promised and failed to deliver. It is my strong belief that we no longer have the luxury, if we ever did have it, to pretend that by voting for a different flavor of the same corporate brand we will bring about the change which is sorely needed in the United States and the world.

Rebecca Solnit: A Necrophile for Empire

Writer and activist Rebecca Solnit has recently penned an essay criticizing those on the left who have chosen not to support the re-election of Obama on moral grounds. What else can one expect from someone who, just recently, praised the pornographic violence of The Hunger Games book trilogy – she found it "irresistible" – as some kind of radical anti-corporate message?

Faux liberals such as Solnit are so deeply embedded in the current corporate cultural system – from which, not surprisingly, she directly profits from – that they have lost touch with reality and, most importantly, with their own humanity. These are the morally corrupt American so-called liberals who choose to believe they are reading/watching an anti-corporate book/movie so that they can feel free to enjoy the ultimate necrophiliac pleasure of imagining/seeing children kill other children. Henry Giroux writes:

The film and its success are symptomatic of a society in which violence has become the new lingua franca. It portrays a society in which the privileged classes alleviate their boredom through satiating their lust for violent entertainment and, in this case, a brutalizing violence waged against children. While a generous reading might portray the film as a critique of class-based consumption and violence given its portrayal of a dystopian future society so willing to sacrifice its children, I think, in the end, the film more accurately should be read as depicting the terminal point of what I have called elsewhere the suicidal society (a suicide pact literally ends the narrative).

Given Hollywood's rush for ratings, the film gratuitously feeds enthralled audiences with voyeuristic images of children being killed for sport. In a very disturbing opening scene, the audience observes children killing each other within a visual framing that is as gratuitous as it is alarming. That such a film can be made for the purpose of attaining high ratings and big profits, while becoming overwhelming popular among young people and adults alike, says something profoundly disturbing about the cultural force of violence and the moral emptiness at work in American society. Of course, the meaning and relevance of "The Hunger Games" rest not simply with its production of violent imagery against children, but with the ways these images and the historical and contemporary meanings they carry are aligned and realigned with broader discourses, values and social relations. Within this network of alignments, risk and danger combine with myth and fantasy to stoke the seductions of sadomasochistic violence, echoing the fundamental values of the fascist state in which aesthetics dissolves into pathology and a carnival of cruelty.

Perhaps, this is the same type of hidden pleasure that Hillary Clinton and Obama (like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al) must feel as they rain drones over the heads of helpless children in the Arab world under the guise of humanitarian intervention – aptly renamed humanitarian imperialism by Jean Bricmont.

Sadly, Solnit and other supporters of the Obama imperial status-quo are the very product of the American corporate culture of violence, the subject of Chris Hedges's Death of the Liberal Class and Empire of Illusion and of many enlightening commentaries by Henry Giroux.

Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me

Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of The Nation, has written an opinion piece in The Washington Post titled Progressives Must Work to Retake the Supreme Court.

After having read the piece, I must say that Katrina shows a clear lack of understanding of the U.S. constitutional system. The U.S. Supreme Court is, by design, a reactionary institution whose function is to limit the power of the most democratic branch of government (Congress). And while, historically, there are instances of socially progressive Court decisions, by and large, the institution's primary function is to protect and promote the interests of corporate America. Just look at the current composition of the court: eight out of nine justices are pro-corporate individuals. These include Obama's appointments.

Also, the right-wing nature of the institution notwithstanding, if Katrina vanden Heuvel wants to be taken seriously she needs to be more candid about who she wants to retake the Court from whom; advocating for Obama's re-elections implies the socially liberal corporatists (Dems) v. socially conservative corporatists (Reps) dichotomy. If, instead, she means that the People need to retake the Supreme Court, then she should advocate electing a president by the people rather than by the corporations such as Obama.

Only when we elect a president who truly represents the people, we can talk about retaking the Supreme Court. Until then, the cries by the likes of Katrina vanden Heuvel are simply scare tactics to make people vote for Obama and the corporate state. This is why in the current presidential election, I will vote for Jill Stein of the Green Party.

(To those who chastise voters who vote their conscience rather than voting  for the lesser-of-two-evils – itself an oxymoron, given Obama's pitiful record – I say this: if you vote Democratic thinking that the Democratic party is going to take your vote as anything other than a full endorsement of their policies, you clearly do not understand electoral politics. Because, make no mistake, after every election parties look at results very carefully, including those of smaller parties. Any spillover in any direction is assessed and, if considered worrisome, addressed by modifying the party's message to include those voters' concerns. If you don't believe me, just look at how much time both major parties spend courting the so-called independents.)

President Strangelove

Krugman and the Truth About the 1% That Can't Be Spoken

I have been participating in OWS with increased intensity over the course of the last two months. The defining moment for me was the illegal and brutal eviction on November, 15. One of the things that I liked about the Freedom Plaza encampment was the Think Tank discussion: people from all walks of life gathering together in a public space discussing openly about the inadequacies of capitalism.

Today's New York Times op-ed by Paul Krugman The Post-Truth Campaign reminded me of these discussions particularly in terms of certain ideological tenets that seem so engrained into our collective unconscious even in the face of the starkest of realities. In this regard, Krugman opens his essay by positing the following:

Suppose that President Obama were to say the following: “Mitt Romney believes that corporations are people, and he believes that only corporations and the wealthy should have any rights. He wants to reduce middle-class Americans to serfs, forced to accept whatever wages corporations choose to pay, no matter how low.”

Krugman goes on to say that such a statement would be universally condemned by almost everyone, including himself, and much of the essay is dedicated to creating a moral equivalence between the statement above and the continuous charges coming from Republicans about Obama being a redistributive socialist. He continues by wondering why the latter statements do not meet a condemnation similar to that which the former would receive if Obama, or anyone else for that matter, would dare uttering it.

As the title of his piece summarizes, Krugman describes this type of environment the Post-Truth Campaign.

While Krugman should be thanked for putting his finger on a praxis that has become pretty much the modus operandi of political discourse, his underlying ideological tenets don't seem to alert the Princeton economist to the fact that he has lured himself into an logical fallacy. If the idea of a post-truth political environment is assumed to be true – as I believe it has been for at least a decade – then Obama should be able to say that Mitt Romney, the embodiment of the 1%, wants to reduce middle-class Americans to serfs without causing any particular uproar in the establishment community. For this reason, the fact that he can't say it is proof that the statement is true: the 1% wants to reduce middle-class Americans to serfs, forced to accept whatever wages corporations choose to pay, no matter how low.

One of the primary goals of capitalism is to reduce labor costs. According to Marx's concept of surplus value, the lower the wages the higher the profits for capital. This is why the 1% has historically being opposed to unions or anyone and anything (i.e. minimum wage legislation) that would champion workers' wages. In the post-truth age, the increase of surplus value is called an increase in productivity. This is an euphemism for laying off workers while putting the extra work on the shoulders of remaining workers who must work longer ours without having their salaries raised.

If we take this tendency of capitalism to maximize profit by minimizing labor costs to its logical conclusion, it follows that the ideal wage from a capitalist's standpoint is zero. And what do we call someone who works for free or perhaps for simply food and shelter? That is a serf or, in other words, a slave. For this reason, it can be said that serfdom and slavery are an intrinsic tendency of capitalism because they represent the ultimate zero-level labor cost.

Yet, many in this country – including Krugman and those who I sometimes happened to converse with in the Think Tank discussions at Freedom Plaza – seem to not be able to grasp this simple reality. It's as if it is not possible for many people to accept that in America there are people, the 1%, who would have no qualms to return this country to the middle-ages or even earlier, more brutal forms of slavery. This resistance is perhaps rooted in the positivist idea of inevitable human progress, the idea that we could never go back to certain forms of barbarism. Yet, history is full of examples of regress – the middle-ages being only one the most glaring. Even Krugman admitted so much in an op-ed earlier this year when he wrote that the country was well on its way of becoming a banana republic.

The fact is that many Americans still seem unable to accept that given the chance the 1% would gladly turn this country into a Honduran style republic, where a tiny oligarchy which controls most of the wealth uses the government and death squads as a tool to repress a population of mostly peasants. Yet, the signs of this coming reality are all around us if one only cares to look:

– The absolute impunity of Wall Street executives in the greatest plunder of wealth in human history.

– A defense (sic) bill that enables the executive to deploy the military in the United States to arrest and detain Americans indefinitely.

– A 1% whose wealth has reached 1929 levels of concentration and which is thrusting the country into a depression.

I could go on and on but the point is simple: rather than being an imaginary statement, the truth about the 1% that can't be spoken is that they sense an historic opportunity and they are pursuing it with a vengeance: turning working people into serfs. Krugman even alluded to that much when he said that the Troika is now trying to destroy the European dream. On this, economist Dean Baker concurs. The truth is that, if they succeed, we are next.

Obama Viewed Less Favorably Than Bush in the Arab World

First posted on Daily Kos on July 13, 2011.

According to a new poll released by the Arab American Institute, a nonpartisan research and advocacy group, and conducted by Zogby International, president Obama's approval rating is currently lower than that of president Bush in his final year in office.

While Zogby International has been accused of right wing bias, the analysis of the data was done by James Zogby, founder of the AAI and member of the Democratic National Committee. Incidentally, he is also the brother of John Zogby, president and CEO of Zogby International. This poll simply confirms and broadens the findings of a Pew poll of Egyptians from last April which found that most Egyptians do not trust the United States.

The results of the poll, considering that Obama's approval rating stood at 30% when he first took office while riding the wave of change at home and abroad, should come at no surprise:

While the vehemence of Arab reaction to the U.S. was startling, the general sentiment echoed points made in AAI President James Zogby’s 2010 book Arab Voices, in which he reflected on Arab opinions of both the U.S. and our foreign policies. “American democracy [seems] a lot like damaged goods to many Arabs… U.S. policy in the region has increasingly undermined Arab attitudes toward America as a global model.”

This considering that Obama has failed to end the war in Iraq – regardless of what the pentagon and the punditocracy would like the American people to believe – and it is actually laboring to maintain a troop contingent in Iraq beyond the December 31, 2011 deadline, by pretending that the U.S. government is simply complying with a request of the "sovereign" Iraqi government.

Then, there is the expanded war in Afghanistan with also no near end in sight, the not so covert drone wars in Pakistan, Yemen, and perhaps Somalia, the NATO bombing of Lybia, the lackluster support of the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt and only when it was politically unfeasible to do otherwise, the practically nonexistent criticism of Saudi Arabia's quashing of the revolt in Bahrain, while at the same time singling out Syria's repression of its own population.

Last but not least there is the failure to close Guantanamo Bay, as well as the total impasse on the Israeli-Palestinian front which is giving Israel free rein to pursue its illegal blockade of the Palestinian people as well as assassinate U.S. citizens with the blessing of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

For all these reasons:

Far from seeing the U.S. as a leader in the post-Arab Spring environment, the countries surveyed viewed "U.S. interference in the Arab world" as the greatest obstacle to peace and stability in the Middle East, second only to the continued Palestinian occupation.

As a matter of fact, according to this poll, Obama's approval rating is so low (10% or less, depending on which country), that it is by far lower than that of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In conclusion, it can be said that in slightly more than two years, Barack Obama has been able to squander the goodwill of the people in the Arab world and recast the image of the United States as that of an imperial power that has little regard for the democratic aspirations of the arab people unless they happen to coincide with its strategic and economic interests.

Discussing the poll, Glenn Greewald writes today:

Given that it is anti-American sentiment that, more than anything else, fuels Terrorism (as the Pentagon itself has long acknowledged), we yet again find the obvious truth: the very policies justified in the name of combating Terrorism are the same ones that do the most to sustain and perpetuate it.

Cornel West on Obama

First posted on Daily Kos on May 16, 2011.

In a interview with Chris Hedges published on May 16 on truthdig, moral philosopher and democratic intellectual Cornel West speaks openly about his feelings of disillusionment about Barak Obama. While feeling misled by the Obama phenomenon, West also says that he needs to take responsibility for "reading into it more than was there."

University Professor of African American Studies and Religion at Princeton University Cornell West is no stranger to the now president of the United States, having done 65 campaign events in support for Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign. But after Obama was elected, he began to realize that things in Washington were not going to be as different as many of Obama's supporters liked to believe:

I was thinking maybe he has at least some progressive populist instincts that could become more manifest after the cautious policies of being a senator and working with Lieberman as his mentor. But it became very clear when I looked at the neoliberal economic team. The first announcement of Summers and Geithner I went ballistic. I said, ‘Oh, my God, I have really been misled at a very deep level.’ And the same is true for Dennis Ross and the other neo-imperial elites. I said, ‘I have been thoroughly misled, all this populist language is just a facade. I was under the impression that he might bring in the voices of brother Joseph Stiglitz and brother Paul Krugman. I figured, OK, given the structure of constraints of the capitalist democratic procedure that’s probably the best he could do. But at least he would have some voices concerned about working people, dealing with issues of jobs and downsizing and banks, some semblance of democratic accountability for Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats who are just running amuck. I was completely wrong.

West continues:

It became very clear to me as the announcements were being made that this was going to be a newcomer, in many ways like Bill Clinton, who wanted to reassure the Establishment by bringing in persons they felt comfortable with and that we were really going to get someone who was using intermittent progressive populist language in order to justify a centrist, neoliberalist policy that we see in the opportunism of Bill Clinton. It was very much going to be a kind of black face of the DLC.

Speaking about his sense of betrayal, West feels that Obama has been swallowed by the oligarchic mentality which pervades Washington:

This was maybe America’s last chance to fight back against the greed of the Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats, to generate some serious discussion about public interest and common good that sustains any democratic experiment. We are squeezing out all of the democratic juices we have. The escalation of the class war against the poor and the working class is intense. More and more working people are beaten down. They are world-weary. They are into self-medication. They are turning on each other. They are scapegoating the most vulnerable rather than confronting the most powerful. It is a profoundly human response to panic and catastrophe. I thought Barack Obama could have provided some way out. But he lacks backbone.

Finally, while not excluding voting for Obama again as a last resort, West contends that perhaps the only hope for a better future rests in third party formations and grassroots movements as well as acts of civil disobedience:

We have got to attempt to tell the truth, and that truth is painful. It is a truth that is against the thick lies of the mainstream. In telling that truth we become so maladjusted to the prevailing injustice that the Democratic Party, more and more, is not just milquetoast and spineless, as it was before, but thoroughly complicitous with some of the worst things in the American empire. I don’t think in good conscience I could tell anybody to vote for Obama. If it turns out in the end that we have a crypto-fascist movement and the only thing standing between us and fascism is Barack Obama, then we have to put our foot on the brake. But we’ve got to think seriously of third-party candidates, third formations, third parties. Our last hope is to generate a democratic awakening among our fellow citizens. This means raising our voices, very loud and strong, bearing witness, individually and collectively. Tavis [Smiley] and I have talked about ways of civil disobedience, beginning with ways for both of us to get arrested, to galvanize attention to the plight of those in prisons, in the hoods, in poor white communities. We must never give up. We must never allow hope to be eliminated or suffocated.

In the end, Cornel West, has come to the conclusion that Barack Obama did not turn out to be the hope and change that most of his supporters around the world would have liked him to be. As noted earlier, West takes responsibility for projecting a lot of his hopes and aspirations onto a person who, after all, never pretended to be anything other than a centrist pro-corporate Democrat.

On the other hand, it is good that West and other intellectuals are waking up in light of the upcoming presidential election. Perhaps, this awakening on the left will force Obama and the Democrats to do something more than simply pay lip service to a base which has been mostly used and abused ever since Barack Obama has come into office.

Aetna™ Wants to Kill Me

It looks like the greedy bureaucrats at Aetna™ have decided that my life is worth less than their bottom line. My doctor has informed me that Aetna™ has denied my claim for a potentially deadly health condition. The reason: pre-existing condition. That's right. They acknowledge my condition to be valid, but since I've had it before I got coverage from Aetna™ they don't want to deal with it.

It wouldn't be fair to just put the blame on Aetna™. After all they simply do what predatory capitalists are supposed to do. That's why I also want to personally thank president Obama and the Democratic party. The reason being that the Health Insurance Reform provision that currently forbids shark insurance companies from denying coverage because of pre-existing condition only applies to people under the age of 19. For everyone else, this provision will not kick in until 2014. You could ask yourself: if Obama could create a provision for everyone under the age of 19 with the stroke of a pen, why couldn't he do it for everyone else? The only cogent answer I can come up with is: cynical political calculation. Basically, most of the goods of the Health Insurance Reform – more apt a description than Health Care Reform – will not come into effect until 2014. It seems that the Democrats and Obama had the bright idea to stake the interest of those whose life hangs in the balance of the pre-existing condition gap against their own re-election hopes. Now that the American people can see the seriousness of the Republican repeal of Health Insurance Reform effort, they will dutifully vote Democratic in 2012 in order to preserve it.

This is a perfect example of what Alain Badiou defines as the essence of modern electoral politics in his 2008 book The Meaning of Sarkozy: fear, and the fear of fear – which in the US would translate as the fear of the Other as fomented by the Republicans, and the fear of the Republican fear as fomented by the liberal Democrats. (More on this topic at some future time).

Small caveat: this cynical political game is going to cost over 100,000 lives. That's because, according to a 2009 Harvard medical study, lack of insurance is responsible for the death of 45,000 Americans every single year. But here comes the rub which exposes the idiocy of the Democratic political calculation: there will be 100,000 less potential Democratic voters who will not be able to vote from their grave in 2012.

Finally, the icing on the cake. To supposedly alleviate this problem of insurance coverage denial because of pre-existing conditions, Obama and the Democrats have come up with the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan. Unfortunately the eligibility requirements state that "if you currently have insurance coverage that doesn’t cover your medical condition ... you are not eligible for the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan." Basically, one is eligible the PCIP government plan only if the insurance company denies coverage altogether. But if the shark insurance company takes your money – i.e. gives you coverage or, more appropriately, the illusion of coverage – and then simply denies the specific claim related to the pre-existing condition, then you get nothing. That's because even if I were to cancel my illusory health insurance policy, I still would not qualify for PCIP since, technically, I was not "denied" insurance coverage. So, while the insurance companies are free to pocket people's premiums in exchange for crumbs, Obama and the Democrats can look like they are doing all they can for those with pre-existing conditions. Simply brilliant.

Long live the Corporate State.

An Open Letter to the Left Establishment

http://protestobama.org/

This letter is a call for active support of protest to Michael Moore, Norman Solomon, Katrina van den Heuvel, Michael Eric Dyson, Barbara Ehrenreich, Thomas Frank, Tom Hayden, Bill Fletcher Jr., Jesse Jackson Jr., and other high profile progressive supporters of the Obama electoral campaign.

With the Obama administration beginning its third year, it is by now painfully obvious that the predictions of even the most sober Obama supporters were overly optimistic. Rather than an ally, the administration has shown itself to be an implacable enemy of reform.

It has advanced repeated assaults on the New Deal safety net (including the previously sacrosanct Social Security trust fund), jettisoned any hope for substantive health care reform, attacked civil rights and environmental protections, and expanded a massive bailout further enriching an already bloated financial services and insurance industry. It has continued the occupation of Iraq and expanded the war in Afghanistan as well as our government’s covert and overt wars in South Asia and around the globe.

Along the way, the Obama administration, which referred to its left detractors as “f***ing retarded” individuals that required “drug testing,” stepped up the prosecution of federal war crime whistleblowers, and unleashed the FBI on those protesting the escalation of an insane war.

Obama’s recent announcement of a federal worker pay freeze is cynical, mean-spirited “deficit-reduction theater”. Slashing Bush’s plutocratic tax cuts would have made a much more significant contribution to deficit reduction but all signs are that the “progressive” president will cave to Republican demands for the preservation of George W. Bush’s tax breaks for the wealthy Few. Instead Obama’s tax cut plan would raise taxes for the poorest people in our country.

The election of Obama has not galvanized protest movements. To the contrary, it has depressed and undermined them, with the White House playing an active role in the discouragement and suppression of dissent – with disastrous consequences. The almost complete absence of protest from the left has emboldened the most right-wing elements inside and outside of the Obama administration to pursue and act on an ever more extreme agenda.

We are writing to you because you are well-known writers, bloggers and filmmakers with access to a range of old and new media, and you have in your power the capacity to help reignite the movement which brought millions onto the streets in February of 2003 but which has withered ever since. There are many thousands of progressives who follow your work closely and are waiting for a cue from you and others to act. We are asking you to commit yourself to actively supporting the protests of Obama administration policies which are now beginning to materialize.

In this connection we would like to mention a specific protest: the civil disobedience action being planned by Veterans for Peace involving Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Joel Kovel, Medea Benjamin, Ray McGovern, several armed service veterans and others to take place in front of the White House on Dec. 16th.

Should you commit yourselves to backing this action and others sure to materialize in weeks and months ahead, what would otherwise be regarded as an emotional outburst of the “fringe left” will have a better chance of being seen as expressing the will of a substantial majority not only of the left, but of the American public at large. We believe that your support will help create the climate for larger and increasingly disruptive expressions of dissent – a development that is sorely needed and long overdue.

We hope that we can count on you to exercise the leadership that is required of all of us in these desperate times.

Best Regards,

Sen. James Abourezk
Tariq Ali
Rocky Anderson
Jared Ball
Russel Banks
Thomas Bias
Jean Bricmont
Noam Chomsky
Bruce Dixon
Frank Dorrel
Gidon Eshel
Jamilla El-Shafei
Okla Elliott
Norman Finkelstein
Glen Ford
Joshua Frank
Margaret Flowers M.D.
John Gerassi
Henry Giroux
Matt Gonzalez
Kevin Alexander Gray
Judd Greenstein
DeeDee Halleck
John Halle
Chris Hedges
Doug Henwood
Edward S. Herman
Jack Hirschman
Dahr Jamail
Derrick Jensen
Louis Kampf
Allison Kilkenny
Jamie Kilstein
Joel Kovel
Mark Kurlansky
Peter Linebaugh
Scott McLarty
Cynthia McKinney
Dede Miller
Russell Mokhiber
George Monbiot
Roger Morris
Bobby Muller
Christian Parenti
Michael Perelman
Peter Phillips
Louis Proyect
Ted Rall
Cindy Sheehan
Chris Spannos
Paul Street
Sunil Sharma
Stephen Pearcy
Jeffrey St. Clair
Len Weinglass
Cornel West
Sherry Wolf
Michael Yates
Mickey Z
Kevin Zeese

Please sign the Open Letter to the Left Establishment.

The Audacity of a Wimp

And so McClatchy reports:

President Barack Obama's approval ratings have sunk to the lowest level of his presidency [42 percent], so low that he'd lose the White House to Republican Mitt Romney if the election were held today, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll.

...

Obama's standing among Democrats dropped from a month ago, with his approval rating falling to 74 percent from 83 percent, and his disapproval rating almost doubling, from 11 percent to 21 percent.

Among liberals, his approval rating dropped from 78 percent to 69 percent and his disapproval rating jumped from 14 percent to 22 percent.

Can You Read, Mr. Obama?

PFC Bradley Manning, A True American Hero

By releasing 92,000 classified military field reports from Afghanistan to WikiLeaks, PFC Bradley Manning is living proof that there is a spark of rebellion within the American Empire. Manning's courageous action goes to show what it means for a soldier to refuse illegal and immoral orders. And for this reason, PFC Bradley Manning is a true American hero.

Naturally, Empire is very upset for what Manning did in order to protect his comrades who are dying in foreign lands to scratch Obama's imperial itches. In true doublespeak, Empire tells us that Manning's action put the lives of our soldiers at risk. But in reality, we all know that it is Barack Obama, the commander in chief of the armed forces, who is putting the lives of American soldiers at risk every day.

If you would like to show your support, you can write PFC Bradley Manning at this address:

Inmate PFC Bradley Manning
TFCF - Theater Field Confinement Facility
APO AE 09366 USA

You Can Judge A Magazine by Its Cover

The world's economic standard bearer The Economist has been caught manipulating a Reuters photo of President Obama in order to convey the message of a 'damaged' presidency. The question that the magazine's editors should ask themselves is this: if people can't trust what's on the magazine's cover, how can they trust what's inside?


Another corporate media outlet caught red handed in the act of manipulating its readership for political purposes. You can address your complaints to The Economist here.

The Monopolistic Behavior of Corporations

And the government that allows it

I am sure you've had this experience one way or another with a computer, an iPhone, or some other thing. You buy the thing, say, a computer, and then you add some ram, or upgrade the hard drive. Then something happens and when the maker of the thing finds out that you have modified or opened the thing, they say the warranty is void. So, what they are really saying is that when you buy something from them, you have to do everything they say, like not add components from a cheaper source, or they will not guarantee even what they made (or, the entire machine). So, I wonder, where exactly is the free market? If I can't add parts to a computer unless I want to jeopardize my entire investment, where exactly is the consumer's choice?

So the people, the government, should step in and prevent this type of monopolistic behavior from happening in the first place. But instead we see a government going against the people's will, sometimes simply by not acting, and sometimes by cooperating with those who are taking advantage of their position of power. And in this vein, we see President Obama say that he doesn't mind that the Wall Street bankers who got rescued by the people should be rewarded for their reckless actions that put the entire world economy at risk with bonuses. Here is what he said to Bloomberg BusinessWeek on Tuesday:

Q: Let's talk bonuses for a minute: Lloyd Blankfein, $9 million; Jamie Dimon, $17 million. Now, granted, those were in stock and less than what some had expected. But are those numbers okay?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, first of all, I know both those guys. They're very savvy businessmen. And I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That's part of the free market system. I do think that the compensation packages that we've seen over the last decade at least have not matched up always to performance. I think that shareholders oftentimes have not had any significant say in the pay structures for CEOs.

Q Seventeen million dollars is a lot for Main Street to stomach.

THE PRESIDENT: Listen, $17 million is an extraordinary amount of money. Of course, there are some baseball players who are making more than that who don't get to the World Series either. So I'm shocked by that as well. I guess the main principle we want to promote is a simple principle of "say on pay," that shareholders have a chance to actually scrutinize what CEOs are getting paid. And I think that serves as a restraint and helps align performance with pay. The other thing we do think is the more that pay comes in the form of stock that requires proven performance over a certain period of time as opposed to quarterly earnings is a fairer way of measuring CEOs' success and ultimately will make the performance of American businesses better.

Is President Obama saying this because he believes it? I think I have to trust him that he does; and if he does, then he is part of the problem, not the solution. He doesn't see that there is nothing entrepreneurial about profiting from the American people rescuing them from oblivion. We saved the system to save "our way of life", I get it; but does our way of life include getting run over by the system? I would prefer not. Also, I don't think a baseball player who would recklessly put the survival of the team in jeopardy would be rewarded with a bonus or a new contract. So I am really not sure what President Obama is trying to accomplish here, but maybe he is simply hedging, as he's been doing pretty much since he became president.

Obama: Old Wine In New Bottle

As I observe the moral implosion of the Democratic leadership, I keep thinking of an essay by Noam Chomsky commenting on the Clinton presidency. In the 1996 essay, titled "Old Wine in New Bottles: A Bitter Taste," Chomsky expands on Paul Krugman's assumption that "bad ideas flourish because they are in the interest of powerful groups." In this case, Krugman was talking about international economic development and specifically about New Zealand; but Chomsky extrapolated this conclusion and applied it to corporate capitalism in general.

In a way, Chomsky's insight presaged Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine," and today, it is easy to see how Obama is simply continuing the regressive policies systematized by Clinton, and put on hyperdrive by Bush. In the essay, Chomsky restates Krugman's conclusion by saying that "the "bad ideas" may not serve the "expressed goal," but they typically turn out to be very good ideas for their proponents." The current health care reform bill is a perfect example of such bad ideas.

The left is understandably dismayed at the form this health care bill is taking, but if we look at its unfolding under the prism of Chomsky's and Klein's analysis, we can see how, in the end, it is all according to plan. Sure, the "realists" will tell you that this is the best thing we can get in the current climate, but their thinking is predicated on an old dichotomy that sees the Democratic party leadership in opposition to the Republican leadership.

Unfortunately, such dichotomy is all for show and nothing more. And all we really need in order to expose the theatrical aspect of this purported opposition between the Republican party and the Democratic party is the following picture:


This is not a portrait of people who disagree with each other. This is the portrait of five masters of the universe showing unity of mind and purpose.

Returning to the health care bill and Chomsky's analysis, he goes on to point out some regularities in the policies imposed by international capital onto unwilling populations around the world, the first being that:

[T]he designers seem to come out quite well, though the experimental subjects, who rarely sign consent forms, quite often take a beating.

The current health care bill will do just that: let the designers (the health insurance companies) come out quite well with the government mandating 30 million new customers to purchase unregulated products from a cartel of colluding private corporations. In this case, we the people are also one of the "rare" examples where we did sign a consent form in the form of a ballot. Unlike other countries around the world who have no say in what the World Bank tells them to do, we actually put the people who are screwing us, and the rest of the world, in charge.

The fact that the current bill does not guarantee any real form of competition in the health care system brings me to another point that Chomsky makes later on in the essay:

Free market doctrine comes in two varieties. The first is the official doctrine that is taught to and by the educated classes, and imposed on the defenceless. The second is what we might call "really existing free market doctrine": For thee, but not for me, except for temporary advantage; I need the protection of the nanny state, but you must learn responsibility under the harsh regimen of "tough love." Those in a position to make choices typically adopt the second version of free market doctrine, the one that has been a prerequisite to development, so the historical record suggests, though not a sufficient condition for it.

This is not only what is happening now with the health care bill, but also what has happened with the TARP bill and the rescue of big banks. The common term would be corporate welfare, or corporate socialism, or corporatism (can you say, fascism?). Maybe, but you get the point. International corporations are getting their way in the world, and while until Clinton the American people where under the assumption that this system also benefited them, now it is clear that those days were simply a rehearsal for what is coming to pass now.

Once these bait and switch techniques have been refined in New Zealand, Latin America, Africa and such, they can be applied to the much more sophisticated western populations. And so, today we see Obama and the Democrats touting this health care bill as a great thing, when they can't even look at the camera with a straight face because they know that this will only drive more people into bankruptcy and destitution. Matt Taibbi has done a great job in this regard by exposing Obama and the Democrats in "Obama's Big Sellout."

This type of attitude of our political class goes also to show their hubris. The Democrats believe that working people and progressives have nowhere to turn to, and thus they are confident that no matter how bad they behave, people will eventually hold their nose and vote for them as the lesser of two evils. As Chomsky points out:

[D]emocracy is a nuisance to be ignored as long as possible, and that free enterprise means that the public pays the costs under various guises, bearing the risks if things go wrong, while profit is privatized. And in pursuit of these ends, decision-making is to be transferred as much as possible from the public arena to unaccountable private tyrannies, and "locked in" by treaties that undermine the potential threat of democracy.

AIG bailout, anyone?

This is exactly what is happening today, and while under Clinton it was still under most people's radar, and only perceptive people like Chomsky and some other few could see it, today is all done in the open, by dangling the specter of Depression in front of the American people. In the meantime, we are in a Depression; at least those of us who live in the real world. The real unemployment is probably close to 20% since the government, from Clinton onward, has been fudging the figures to the point that they are meaningless. The term jobless recovery is also something that is becoming an euphemism for the government bailing out the rich while letting everyone else hanging out to dry.

In conclusion, Chomsky's essay shows us how Clinton then and Obama now are simply new bottles for the same old wine. And if this wine tasted bitter in 1996, now it makes people want to puke. That's why people are getting mad, and throwing things at the likes of Bush and Berlusconi, or why there are clashed in Copenhagen as I write. People are sick and tired of vampire like corporations sucking them dry and they are speaking out. For this reason, while things seem to be going from bad to worse, and even though the political process is deadlocked, I see hope for the future. Not the Obama empty promise type of hope, but the hope that people are once more taking their destiny into their own hands as it happened during the Vietnam war.

On this, I'll leave the last word to Howard Zinn, who on Bill Moyers last week so eloquently said:

[T]hink for yourself. Don't believe what the people up there tell you. Live your own life. Think your own ideas. And don't depend on saviors. Don't depend on the Founding Fathers, on Andrew Jackson, on Theodore Roosevelt, on Lyndon Johnson, on Obama. Don't depend on our leaders to do what needs to be done... [P]eople should defy the rules if they think they're doing the right thing.

Democrats Should Pay Attention to MSNBC August Ratings

[First published as a Daily Kos diary on Thursday, September 3, 2009.]

There has been a lot of discussion about the possibility that the White House may decide to stick it to its progressive base on health care reform. As the MSM conventional wisdom goes, Obama is losing support among independent voters who, in large part, are happy with their health care and don't want the public option. That couldn't be further from the truth. As Jed Lewison reports, a recent CNN poll shows a 55% support for the public option.

The other interesting piece of news, which is the subject of this diary, is that during the heated August health care debate MSNBC outperformed CNN by 61 percent and FNC by 4 percent in the key 18-34 demographic in prime time. Let me restate this, the cable news channel which has been the most vocal in support of the public option (Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Ed Shultz) and, to a certain extent, single payer, was also the #1 news network among younger viewers during the month of August when all the kooks were supposedly coming out of the woods against health care reform.

TV by the Numbers just headlined: "MSNBC Beats CNN in Primetime in August Among Viewers 25-54". Further down, we find out that the news channel not only beat CNN but also FOX network among younger viewers, Adults 18-34, in primetime. Further more, we learn that “The Rachel Maddow Show” is "the fastest growing cable news show at 9 p.m, up a huge 92 percent in total viewers versus August 2008."

Is the White House paying attention to this?

We are told by the mainstream media that the reason behind Obama's sagging polls is that he is too liberal and that he is losing support among independents because of it. If that were the case, why are 55% of Americans still supporting the public option? Obviously it doesn't add up, and the truth is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Obama's polls are sagging because he is too corporate and not liberal enough and thus he is losing the support of his base.

The White House has been telling his base to suck it up since it came into office and before: support for the Bush bailout and subsequent Obama bailout of Wall Street, inadequate Stimulus Package, no Iraq pullout and escalation in Afghanistan, and now compromised health care reform. It is my sense that the progressive base of the Democratic party has had enough and for this reason, health care reform and specifically the public option has become the litmus test for progressive democrats.

Obama and the White House should pay serious attention to this and not make the mistake of throwing its base with the sausage scraps. While corporate democrats such as Rahm Emanuel may believe that the party has to bend over in order to maintain the support of pharmaceutical and health insurance corporations in 2010 and 2012, do they really think that such industries will desert the Democratic party now that they are in power for the foreseeable future and the Republican party is reduced to a pulp? I don't think so. Corporations are, by definition, apolitical. All they care about is profit and, for this reason, they will hedge their bets and support both parties as they have always done because they want to have a seat at the table no matter who wins.

Finally, the Obama administration the Democratic Congress have enacted the Wall Street bailout, the GM/Chrysler bailout, and the Stimulus Plan while brushing off overwhelming public opposition. Its line of defense has always been that they did so because they believed their actions to be necessary. Yet, on the health care debate, skewed opinion polls due to relentless corporate propaganda seem to become the all important metric to wether it is politically feasible to pass a strong health care bill.

Since none of this makes sense, it is fair to assume that the base will not be fooled by it and if Obama and the democrats renege on their promise to pass universal, affordable health care reform for all with a strong public option, they will most likely lose a considerable slice of their base: especially the young, 18-34 Democrats who watch MSNBC as they are the ones who have the most to lose from yet another corporate giveaway in the form of a private health insurance mandate without the choice of a strong, and affordable public option.

The only possible positive good outcome in this scenario would be if progressive Democrats in Congress finally accept the fact that there is no future for progressives and their causes in the Democratic party. If health care reform fails to deliver the three important aspects of affordability, accessibility, and cost control, they better start thinking about splitting the party and create a new truly progressive party to the left of the now corporate owned Democratic party.

The timing couldn't be more propitious as the Republicans are in shambles and they could be relegated to the far right for good. We would then have a three party system with the Democrats at the corporate center, and two parties to the left and right of it which may not be able to win a presidency, but could seriously impact the business of Congress. The top down creation of a progressive party which truly represents the American people would create real competition and keep the corporate party duopoly honest (pun intended).

Whole Foods Boycott

Last week, Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey wrote an opinion piece in Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal titled "The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare," opposing President Obama's efforts to create a government-funded public healthcare option. He also criticized the single-payer healthcare system of countries such as Canada and Britain saying he doesn’t believe in “an intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter,” which he said are best provided through “market exchanges.” This is not very different than Bush's position on health care.

In the op-ed piece, John Mackey writes that a "careful reading of both The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter." Mr. Mackey either ignores or doesn't care about the fact that the United States has ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 25 of the declaration states:

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

I used to spend around of $200 a week ($10,000 a year) at Whole Foods, but after reading Mackey's piece, I've decided to no longer shop there and buy my groceries somewhere else. Various organizations such as Single Payer Action have also called for a boycott of the chain.


Update I: there is now a Facebook boycott page with 20,000 members as of August 20, 2009. The Baltimore Sun reports that for every 7,700 customers boycotting, there is a 1% loss of revenue for the store chain. You do the math.

Update II: wholeboycott.com, a dedicate website for the Whole Foods boycott is now up and running.

(image source)