Wall Street Occupation: A New American Revolution?

New York City, September 28, 2011:

IT almost seemed like business as usual this evening on Wall Street, at the end of another hectic day in the rat-race.  Yet the presence of police barricades along the entire length of this usually jam-packed thoroughfare portended something rather different.  And indeed, just up the street and around the corner at Freedom Square (a.k.a Zuccotti Park), things were anything but normal.

Being at the scene of the ongoing "Occupy Wall Street" movement didn't exactly seem comparable to being at Tahrir (Liberation) Square at the height of last winter's revolution in Cairo. Then again, America's financial oligarchs are not cut from the same cloth as Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarek; they represent a different kind of ruling elite, one that is much more diffuse but, in the grand scheme of things, far more powerful.

It is because of the wealth flowing into and out of Wall Street that the this country has been able to exercise global dominance for the last half-century, which is in essence what allowed the brutal Mubarek regime to exist in the first place.  And although that dynamic is changing as the influence of the US military-industrial complex continues to wane in relation to other world powers (i.e. China), the fat-cats on Wall Street and their political cronies in Washington DC in many ways today exert even more power over the average American citizen than at any time in history.



Of course, this particular protest must be understood as part of a global movement, motivated in large part by the success of the "Arab Spring," but ultimately larger than even that; it stretches from Israel, to Canada, as well as other cities in the US (San Francisco, Chicago, etc.) and on college campuses across the world.  As wealth and power have become increasingly consolidated among a relatively small group of individuals, logic would dictate that the masses will eventually rise up and demand justice --nothing more, nothing less.

Only time will tell how all of this will play out.  But one thing seems clear enough amid the mix of activists and curious onlookers gathered in Freedom Square in defiance of business as usual on Wall Street: people everywhere are rising up and making their voices heard (despite an official NYPD ban on amplified sound-systems). The time for action has arrived. And as of this moment, there is no going back.

Earth to Obama: Go Left, or Go Home!

Republican Scott Brown's victory over Democrat Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts special election to replace Ted Kennedy, the late "liberal lion" of the senate, has shocked the Beltway and rattled nerves in the White House and Congress. Although Coakley's particularly lackluster campaign played a significant role in her improbable defeat, the larger problem facing the Democrats is the ineffectiveness of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid leadership. If reports from the Coakley campaign are true, Obama's unwillingness to directly challenge Wall Street has become a massive electoral liability, with angry voters directing their rage over the state of the economy squarely at the White House. Seen also as having been a referendum on current health care reform legislation, the Brown victory spells major trouble for Democrats in the upcoming 2010 congressional and 2012 presidential elections. While Joe Lieberman is making a predictable and laughable pitch for the Democrats to move even further to the center in hopes of preventing a rapid slide from power, their only real hope lay in the exact opposite: a move sharply to the left.

As Arianna Huffington notes, the loss in Massachusetts could prove a blessing in disguise if it inspires Democrats to abandon their present middle-of-the-road approach in favor of a bolder and more progressive agenda. FDR, after-all, was nothing more than an astute politician who could tell which way the wind was blowing; he chose to confront the "banksters" because it was popular to do so. It may be too late for the Democrats to begin channeling populist anger in their favor, or it may just be impossible for them to do so given how beholden they are to corporations. But, if any of the Democratic leadership actually still have spines, now is the time to use them. Soon to be lacking the coveted 60 seat majority in the senate, Obama should press the reset button on health care and recommend that Congress pass a progressive bill--with a public option--using the budget reconciliation process in which only 51 votes are needed. If they were to follow this with a new attempt to pass serious financial regulation while devising a comprehensive strategy for stemming the tide of unemployment, it could be possible to reinvigorate the Democratic base and make an electoral comeback centered on actually delivering "change" rather than capitulating to the status quo.

Yet the likelihood of such a reversal is slim indeed, and progressives may at this point be better off pursuing strategies that bypass the Democratic party altogether. This would likely lead to a Republican revival in the short term, but in the long term it could force a much needed political realignment and lead to the formation of a social-democratic alternative offering real solutions as opposed to mere slogans.

Military-Industrial Complex 1, Obama 0

Live From the Swamp

On Location in Washington, DC

Photos by Ari Cushner

As President Obama announced his new strategy to send an additional 34,000 troops to Afghanistan by the summer of 2010, a small yet vocal group of protesters led by Medea Benjamin and Code Pink descended on the White House to voice their opposition.  The best that can be said about Obama's speech, from a progressive point of view, is that he simultaneously announced his decision to began a withdrawal of American forces from the region by July of 2011.  In essence, he plans to end the war by first escalating it. This concept is difficult to grasp, although the logic appears to be that he intends to "finish the job" once and for all in a defined period of time.  Even harder to understand is the possibility of this new strategy actually working given the reality of what has been an eight year-long quagmire in which the "enemy" keeps shifting along with the underlying rationale for the war: to hunt down bin Laden and al Qaeda, to rout the Taliban, to train Afghan security forces, to neutralize the threat of violent extremism, etc.

Obama inherited this war from Bush-Cheney, and it does not appear that he embraces it with every fiber of his being as did his predecessors.  He seems to be pursuing a purely political and generally pragmatic course of action designed to appease those in the Pentagon, for whom war and US military power are a way of life, while at the same time trying to subdue growing opposition to this conflict coming primarily from his left flank.

As Obama attempts to thread the needle between those who run the military-industrial complex and those who view US militarism as a grave danger to the well-being of the nation, his efforts may fail and will surely cost many lives and an untold amount of money in the meantime.  People have a right to be furious, and many are. Still, as the following excerpt demonstrates, this long-term strategy could point the way towards an eventual reorganization of priorities away from costly and ultimately counterproductive wars abroad in order to focus on urgent domestic priorities: jobs, healthcare, education, renewable energy, etc.

I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan. I do not make this decision lightly. I opposed the war in Iraq precisely because I believe that we must exercise restraint in the use of military force, and always consider the long-term consequences of our actions. We have been at war now for eight years, at enormous cost in lives and resources. Years of debate over Iraq and terrorism have left our unity on national security issues in tatters, and created a highly polarized and partisan backdrop for this effort. And having just experienced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the American people are understandably focused on rebuilding our economy and putting people to work here at home... I see firsthand the terrible wages of war. If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake in Afghanistan, I would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow. So, no, I do not make this decision lightly. I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The commander-in-chief has thusly announced clearly that he understands the building skepticism about devoting still more national resources abroad when such resources are desperately  needed here at home. Yet, he declares that he his committed to this plan because he sees it as being in the best interest of the  "security" and "safety" of Americans, otherwise he "would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow." Many would be thrilled if he did just this, myself included. But it would seem that Obama is unable to embrace this point-of-view for fear that his chances for reelection in 2012 would be doomed if he were to simply announce that the war is a lost cause, and it therefore would be better to cut our losses now.  He might, according to this logic, be pilloried by the Right as a weakling, a terrorist-sympathizer, an anti-American liberal with no "national security" bona fides.  Or, perhaps, he truly believes that throwing more blood and treasure down the drain for eighteen months before ending the war actually makes sense.

I believe Obama is hemmed-in by his generals, some (but not all) of his advisers, and the last fifty plus years of US foreign policy during which the projection of military power throughout the world has become a national secular religion. In this context, he ran on a platform of opposing the war in Iraq while supporting the war in Afghanistan because the former pleased liberals while the latter pleased conservatives. This is politics defined. It worked for the 2008 election, and it might just work again in 2012. Yet it is clear that he will at some point be forced to announce the inevitable withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, a withdrawal he has already set in motion. What the current escalation will accomplish is unclear, at best. What is clear is that the Pentagon, the CIA, and the deeply entrenched proponents of military power still hold most of the cards when it comes to determining foreign policy. If the opponents of such militarism can increase their ability to mobilize public support, perhaps the necessary paradigm shift will begin in earnest during the term(s) of a US president who was preemptively awarded a Nobel Peace Prize by an international community desperate for real change when it comes to the role of American global power.

Let us hope sanity will prevail, and let us continue the struggle to make this happen. In the meantime, justice is a distant dream; peace is an unfounded rumor; war is an omnipresent tragedy.

One Year Later: Change We Can Barely See?

Live From the Swamp

On Location in Washington, DC

Photo by Ari Cushner

"On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics."

NINE months ago, Barack Obama's inauguration ushered in a new chapter in US history, one that promised to turn a page on both America's "original sin" of slavery and the most recent sins of the Bush-Cheney era. Having electrified much of the nation with his rhetorical skill while campaigning, Obama delivered his first address as president in a lavish ceremony on the steps of the US Capitol, which was built in part through the labor of slaves. In this context, Obama referenced his biracial ancestry and status as a "global citizen" while at the same time asserting himself, in the tradition of all previous presidents, as a champion of Americanism:

And so, to all the other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born, know that America is a friend of each nation, and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity. And we are ready to lead once more.

Beyond this, and despite his stated opposition to the war in Iraq, the new president announced his commitment to upholding US military power, also in the tradition of his predecessors including G. W. Bush:

We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense. And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken -- you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

At the same time, he often blended the fierce patriotism/jingoism expected of any president, with a strong rebuke of Bush-Cheney policies that seemed to signal a genuine desire to change directions particularly with respect to foreign policy:

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

With such promises in mind, the crowd of perhaps nearly 2 million people who were jammed together on the National Mall celebrated not only the start of what they hoped would be a new beginning, but also the end of what had been, by most accounts, the worst presidency in American history. Bush was booed vociferously when he walked out onto the dais to take his seat. After the speech, when he and Cheney were finally aboard a helicopter en route back to Texas and Wyoming, or Maryland (where both Cheney and Rumsfeld bought homes in the same small town), or a "secure undisclosed location," or...wherever, a jubilant throng chanted the appropriate song lyrics: "Na Na Na-Na, Na Na Na-Na, Hey, Hey, Goodbye!"

A SHORT HONEYMOON

Yet after just a week or so, at best, the gravity of what Obama inherited from Bush sank in: two wars--more accurately, the global military edifice of a "war on terror" with two major fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan that spawned unconstitutional surveillance, torture, and detention programs; eight years of denying the existence of climate change; and a trillion dollar deficit coupled with an acute fiscal "crisis" in which Wall Street literally demanded hundreds of billions of dollars to stave off bank closures and a subsequent collapse of the financial sector that would supposedly cripple the global economy. Whether or not the world really would have faced a new Great Depression had the government not intervened, the "banksters" got their way; in a process begun under Bush and continued under Obama, Wall Street institutions were effectively "bailed-out" to the great consternation of many on the Right and Left. This was immediately followed by a massive "stimulus" program designed to address rising unemployment and widespread economic insecurity in so-called "Main Street" America, due in large part to the unraveling of a household debt/mortgage "bubble" created by the greed-driven fraud of financial institutions.

In these and similar economic measures, such as the bailout of General Motors, the Republican Party and its conservative base found an instant rationale for vocal opposition to Obama's agenda as part of a liberal "big-government" spending frenzy, while conveniently neglecting to address the immediate causes of this situation under Bush and presidents before him. Meanwhile, critics on the Left emerged among both those who had not supported Obama to begin with, as well as many who had. For those like progressive economist Paul Krugman, hopes that the stimulus would amount to a New Deal-like jobs/public-works initiative that imposed serious limits on the power of Wall Street were quickly dashed. Many, in fact, thought that Krugman and like-minded progressive economists should have been brought into the administration in order to find durable solutions to the problem of banksters run amok. Yet instead, most members of the Obama economic team were drawn from the pool of "experts" who had orchestrated policy in the Clinton White House on terms highly favorable to Wall Street. For instance Lawrence Summers, the former Clinton Treasury Secretary, became director of Obama's National Economic Council. Summers helped orchestrate the 1999 Congressional repeal of a key provision in the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, designed to separate the activities of commercial and financial lending institutions; this gave Citigroup and other banks the ability to make risky and indeed fraudulent investments--as in the case of "mortgage derivative swaps"--using money from commercial account holders no longer protected by the legislative "firewall." There is no doubt this was a factor in the financial "crisis" that began in September 2008.

Summers, meanwhile, is one of many "neoliberals" who have been at the helm of this nation's economic institutions (in government and industry) since the mid-1970s. Such thinkers are direct or indirect followers of Milton Friedman and his "Chicago School" of economics, while Friedman was himself a disciple of Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek who founded the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947. Hayek's "Austrian School" was launched as a challenge to the prevailing theories propounded by British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynesianism is based on the notion that maximum employment and industrial productivity drives growth, hence, a social welfare "net" for workers is key to a vital national economy. Implemented throughout Europe during the Great Depression, and in the US through the New Deal, Keynesianism effectively held the power of financial elites in check, albeit modestly, though what have become known as "welfare state" policies. In this context, "neoliberalism" is in fact another name for the extreme laissez faire "classical liberalism" of nineteenth century England, against which Keynes arrayed his talents.

Hayek, Friedman, and their followers began a systematic assault on the Keynesian welfare state that finally gained traction in the US, for various reasons, towards the end of the Carter administration when Paul Volcker was installed as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 1979. Volcker was replaced in 1987 by Alan Greenspan, under whose reign neoliberal "free-market" ideology ascended to dominance and formed the basis of Reagan's "trickle-down" economics. Although current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke does not necessarily adhere to neoliberalism as religiously as his immediate predecessors, he has done nothing of significance since being appointed by Bush in 2006 that would suggest he prefers Keynes to Friedman. Volcker, meanwhile, is back in the fold as chairman of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Likewise, Obama's Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is not as clearly connected to Wall Street as was Bush's appointee Henry Paulson, who had previously been the CEO of Goldman Sachs just like Clinton's Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, now associated with Citigroup (both Goldman Sachs and Citigroup have been among the chief beneficiaries of recent government intervention, along with insurance giant AIG). But it's hards to see how Geithner is more a part of the solution than part of the problem.

There are a few members of the administration, like Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Christina Romer (pictured above next to Obama and sandwiched in between Geithner on the left and Summers on the right), who have a record of at lest being sympathetic to Keynesian principals. Other progressives on Obama's economic team include Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Elizabeth Warren, who now oversees the Congressional Oversight Committee that keeps track of the bank bailouts, euphemistically titled the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Warren is interviewed in Michael Moore's latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story, and when asked how the $700 billion of TARP money has been spent, she responds: "I don't know." Elaborating on this further in an interview with the Washington Post's Lois Romano, Warren bluntly explains: "we don't know where the $700 billion is because the system was initially designed [under Bush/Paulson] to make sure that we didn't know."

So while the current crisis in the US financial system was over three decades in the making, and came crashing to a head as a result of Bush-Cheney economic policy, most of the people brought in to clean up the mess are those who bore responsibility for it in the first place; hence, financial institutions have received hundreds of billions of tax-payer dollars, yet have thus far not been forced to pay any real price for having run their companies into the ground through "ponzi schemes" that included the deliberate price inflation of otherwise bad mortgages sold and resold for what amounted to fictional profit. Meaningful regulation of the financial system will only be possible through the further empowerment of people like Elizabeth Warren, who has proposed the creation of a Consumer Protection Agency that is now being vehemently opposed by Wall Street. Yet given how tightly financial elites still dominate both the White House and Congress, through campaign contributions as well as control over key cabinet positions, such reforms seem unlikely any time soon.

BIRTHERS, DEATH-PANELISTS, & TEA PARTIERS! OH MY!

This situation has led to a palpable sense of anger directed at those who continue to rake in massive sums of money while unemployment has risen to almost ten percent, its highest since the 1930s, and home foreclosures are skyrocketing; people are suffering and they can't believe that the CEOs of companies now benefiting handsomely from government assistance, and in some cases making record profits, are still receiving multimillion dollar bonuses. Since the minute Obama won the election, demagogues of the conservative movement and their Republican allies have exploited the populist outrage among their constituency through ridiculous yet effective charges that the bailouts of banks and auto manufactures amount to a "nationalization" of the economy. Radio and television personalities including Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have rejuvenated their careers as political entertainers by feeding their followers' fears over economic hardship along with deeply ingrained skepticism over all things Obama ("isn't he actually a Muslim socialist born in Kenya, or maybe Indonesia, who secretly hates America?"). Paranoid as they may be, these cultural and political anxieties are particularly explosive when mixed together in this country's tremendously durable racial/ethno-religious powder keg--a historical force so entrenched that the election of the first black American president has offered a glimpse into the pervasiveness of such violent hatred as much as it has signaled its moment in the twilight.

Therefore layered atop the quite uninformed accusations that Obama's economic policies are somehow Marxist, socialist, or communist (take your pick), the underlying threat he represents is captured by so-called "Birthers" who question the authenticity of his Hawaii birth certificate and thus not only his legitimacy as president, but his actual status as a legal citizen of the United States. From there it is but one simple step to identify Obama as some type of foreign agent. Glenn Beck in particular helps to fuel these delusions nightly on FOX News, for instance by placing pictures of the President on a large chalkboard together with the likenesses of Mao, Stalin, and Fidel Castro alongside whichever White House allies happen to be his target at the moment; more often than not, such targets are African-American.

In late August and early September, Beck led the charge against Van Jones, a longtime community organizer and grassroots activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area who had been hired in mid-March by Nancy Sutley, head of the White House Environmental Council, as her "special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation." To be sure, Jones does have somewhat of a "radical" background from a mainstream perspective (though he's fairly mainstream relative to the political spectrum in the Bay Area and Northern California more generally). Yet despite his past statements and associations having really nothing to do with his current work on building a "green-collar economy," Beck seized upon every detail of Jones' past in order to vilify him and use him as an example of the supposed radicalism of Obama's White House (never mind that Jones was nowhere near the President's inner-circle). Beck's vitriolic publicity campaign eventually led to Jones' resignation in the middle of the night on Saturday, September 5. Fresh off this victory, which amounted to ridding the administration of perhaps it's only true progressive voice, Beck acted as the ringleader for a nationwide day of protest marches among angry conservatives who throughout the summer began organizing what they described as "tea-parties," a la that famous event in colonial Boston that helped spark the Revolutionary War.

While the so-called "9/12 movement" was largely a product of Beck and his FOX News platform, it did mobilize up to tens of thousands of conservative and rightwing libertarian tea-partiers for its main event on the National Mall. Laying claim to the spirit of American patriotism in 1773, and in some cases even wearing colonial-style "three-cornered" hats, the 9/12 movement represents a quasi-populist, corporate-sponsored (see: Americans for Prosperity) anti-Obama uprising among people who fear his "big government," i.e. socialist agenda. At the same time, while Beck has gone so far as to call Obama "racist," most if not all of the tea-partiers are middle or working class whites who clearly do not believe the President is "one of them" because of his biracial, mixed-ethnic heritage; these are primarily people who have been largely, though not completely manipulated into thinking they abhor his policies, while genuinely fearing the reality of his difference.

Indeed the 9/12 protests were the culmination of a process that gathered steam over the summer, as members of Congress returned to their home districts and held "town hall" meetings to discuss health care reform. Fueling this fire was a cynical manipulation in which Republican lawmakers pretended as though a provision to pay for consultations on end-of-life care would establish "death panels" comprised of government bureaucrats deciding when an elderly person was too costly to keep alive. This myth was launched in large part by a facebook posting of the newly-resigned Alaskan governor Sarah Palin, from whence it ricocheted through FOX News and the rest of the conservative echo-chamber. And then, there was the ACORN controversy, which signifies the manner in which this "astroturfed" rightwing populism now surging amid a deep recession has elements of both a class and race war not too far removed from the climate surrounding the rise of fascism in 1930s Italy and Germany. Indeed, political violence in the summer of 2009 featured both the assassination of an abortion provider and the murder of a black D.C. Holocaust Museum security guard at the hands of a white-supremacist "Birther" who wrote that "Obama was created by the Jews"; a number of protesters also turned up at Obama health care town-halls with loaded firearms.

This analogy might be frighteningly apt if one considers the nature of the center-left/social-democratic Wiemar Republic that was in power during Hitler's rise. Criticized from the far left as being weak and ineffectual, this type of opposition is in line with the sentiments of those who lambaste Obama from a direction opposite that of the "Birthers." Both on the radical left, as well as among disillusioned supporters of the President, charges of incompetence and/or betrayal are mounting. There is palpable and legitimate anger over the slow pace of promised changes such as closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camps, ending the ban on gays in the military, withdrawing from Iraq, and investigating Bush-Cheney torture practices while ceasing their secret surveillance and "extraordinary rendition" programs. Meanwhile there is frustration over his initial tepidness in pursuing financial regulation, and willingness to compromise with the health insurance industry over the scope of proposed reforms, i.e. substituting a a severely watered down "public option" in place of a truly universal single-payer program (Medicare for all). Beyond this, there is dismay among many progressives over the apparent lack of direction in his central foreign policy agenda: navigating the war in Afghanistan/Pakistan, negotiating with Iran, and restarting the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Nine months into Barack Obama's first term: is this "change we can believe in," change we can barely see, or no change at all? The next installment in this series will address these questions, along with the issue of war and peace and the prospects for a revitalized progressive social movement. Stay tuned...

P.S. I was critical of Ralph Nader during the campaign, but check out his interview with MSNBC's Ed Shultz where he discusses his new book Only the Super-rich Can Save Us! It's quite interesting, and it's a pleasant surprise to see Nader still thinking creatively about effective solutions.

1/20/01 - 1/20/09: MAY WE NEVER FORGET

IN the waning hours of George W. Bush's presidency, it seems appropriate to take a few minutes to reflect on how truly horrific the last eight years have been. On second thought, a few minutes would be too much time to spend thinking about Bush on a day when millions of people from across the world are gathering on the National Mall to celebrate Barack Obama's inauguration. Yet as Bush & Company prepare to depart the scene, hopefully for good, the country must not fail to remember the tragic and despicable lawlessness that their time in office has represented.

In recent weeks Bush and his surrogates have made the rounds attempting to burnish the 43rd president's image by touting his administration's many accomplishments. Yet aside from claiming that history will prove they were correct to have invaded and occupied Iraq--a dubious claim, at best--the only major success they can assert is that they "kept the country safe after 9/11." That's right. Bush and Cheney were in office when this country suffered a series of devastating terrorist attacks and, after first refusing to investigate what happened on September 11, 2001, they proceeded to exploit these events in order to further their nefarious agenda: perpetual war in the Middle East, illegal wiretapping/spying on citizens, torturing "detainees" in their so-called "war on terror." And their one major accomplishment was, supposedly, that they managed to prevent another cataclysmic terrorist attack from taking place on their watch.

It is uncertain how much political will there is currently in the Obama orbit for holding the Bush-Cheney regime accountable. Yet, it is imperative that "looking forward" towards a new era of hope and change will include efforts to prosecute those who over the last eight years nearly destroyed the fabric of this republic. It will probably be ugly, and it could become very divisive if all of Bush and Cheney's high crimes and misdemeanors are exposed. Yet if we simply roll on into the Obama era with no sense of holding the last administration accountable for its wrongdoing, future presidents and their minions will surely repeat many of Bush and Cheney's most flagrant offenses.

As we celebrate Obama and look forward to pushing him in a progressive direction, let us also never forget the stolen 2000 election, Enron, 9/11, Iraq, Katrina, and the whole constellation of terror, death, and misery that the last eight years has represented. A new dawn is truly upon us as a black family prepares to take its rightful place in the White House. Yet "the change we need" will only be possible if we are prepared to keep recent history in mind during the exciting days ahead.

Here Ye, Israel: War is Not the Answer

Proving yet again that the mainstream Israeli media is more critical than its counterpart in the United States, Gideon Levy's post "And there lie the bodies" on Haaretz.com warns:

Nobody is coming to the rescue - of Gaza or even of the remnants of humanity and Israeli democracy. The statesmen, the jurists, the poets, the authors, academe, and the news media - pitch black over the abyss. When the time comes for reckoning, we will need to remember the damage this war did to Israel.

Yet while such small pleas for sanity emerge from among elite Israeli journalists, Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell comments on the lack of balance in the New York Times and US media generally. Dissent against Israel's renewed war in Gaza continues growing in Arab countries, across Europe, and now the US as well. Yet the mainstream US media's extreme pro-Israel bias rolls on regardless of how many dead bodies lie in the streets of Gaza (now over 500) or how much opposition to Israeli aggression manifests in the streets of New York, London, Cairo, etc. The reasons for this are many; the end result is tragic.

Season's Greetings from the IDF!

Upon unleashing a deadly wave of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip in its biggest operation in the region since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Jewish state's Defense Minister Ehud Barak declared ominously: "Now is the time for fighting." The Israeli action, which may soon be expanded to involve ground troops, is being justified as a response to rocket attacks launched by Hamas-affiliated Palestinian militants from Gaza into southern Israel. Whatever the rationale, this is yet another case of Israel's commitment to using violence as its primary means of political negotiation. Surely, there are some unsavory characters who lurk in the shadows of Gaza's slums waiting to kill innocent Israelis in order to inflict pain on their enemy. Yet none of these rocket attacks can compare in magnitude to the fury of the Israeli Defense Force's firepower which has so far killed at least 200 Palestinians over the course of a few hours. The international community, while calling for Hamas to halt its rocket attacks, is outraged by Israel's latest attempt to prove that "might makes right."

The timing of these airstrikes is also rather suspicious, as one gets the sense that leaders in Israel are uncertain about Obama's agenda for the Middle East--despite how much he tries to reassure AIPAC--and are thus now scrambling to achieve their military objectives in the region before the official end of the Bush-Cheney era. There are also upcoming elections in Israel, and this latest round of violence would appear to play right into the hands of Benjamin Netanyahu, the hard line Likud leader whose racially-tinged hawkishness towards the Arab world is both well-known and (to many observers) very frightening. If Netanyahu returns to the Prime Minister's office after the next round of voting on Feb. 10 2009, there will be virtually no doubt in which direction Israeli policy will be headed. Thus while it appears that Israel has failed in its mission to cajole the lame-duck Republican administration into starting one more war in the Middle East before riding off into the sunset, today's events indicate that leaders in Tel Aviv may be willing to follow Bush's lead and "go it alone." Thus with Gaza in flames and the world up-in-arms, it might be worth asking what seems in some ways like a ludicrous question: will Iran be next?

CLIMATE CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN

GREEN ALERT

SURELY there is no cause ultimately greater than preserving the sustainability life on earth, preferably including humans; with every passing moment it is increasingly obvious that our planet is becoming less stable/familiar, and it is clear that we must change our ways of life accordingly. From powerful storms and flooding to droughts and lightening-sparked wildfires, the signs of a climate in transition are all around us.

As most people are by now aware, former Vice-President Al Gore has, in the wake of being denied the White House in 2000, been engaged in a campaign to fight against global climate change. His Oscar-winning 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth gained widespread attention and helped lead to Gore's selection in October 2007 as a recipient of the Nobel Prize for his work publicizing the "climate crisis." As someone who until recently had far more credibility in Washington than among activists, Gore may be a highly imperfect messenger for the environmental movement. Then again, he is neither an environmentalist nor a scientific "expert," but a politician who converted himself into a developer of mass environmental awareness while appealing to national and world leaders through such initiatives as wecansolveit.org.

On July 17, 2008 Gore delivered a speech at Constitution Hall in Washington, followed that Sunday with an appearance on Meet the Press, in which he put forth a challenge to the nation: shift to one hundred percent renewable (wind, solar, and other carbon-free) sources of energy by 2018. While gaining broad public and political support, there were also those who questioned whether Gore's 10-year plan was feasible while wondering how it would be funded, especially under current circumstances. In addressing this issue with Tom Brokaw, Gore spoke of needing to"tax what we burn, not what we earn." There is no reason why industry should not pay what amounts to a fine for polluting the atmosphere and contributing to the instability of the climate. Yet in order to raise the immense amount of money necessary to rebuild the national energy infrastructure, those in the highest income bracket--$250, 000 per year and up--will inevitably have to pay a significantly higher percentage of their salary in taxes (as they should).

The question of how to fund such initiatives is especially important since it relates to the idea of ultimately repairing a severely damaged economic system by creating "green collar" jobs that put people back to work installing solar panels and building high-speed railways, for instance. Through its various pronouncements about job creation and infrastructure repair programs, along with a stated commitment to urgent action on the issue of climate change, the incoming Obama administration seems poised to move in the direction of such a Green Deal. Obama's choice of California Rep. Hilda Solis as the next Secretary of Labor would seem to confirm this conclusion (Solis is considered a pro-labor, "green jobs" expert), as would his recent meeting with Gore in Chicago (while it is at the moment unlikely that he would accept the position, there has been speculation that Team Obama has offered to give Gore an official Cabinet post as Climate Change Czar).

In a recent article, "Why Obama's Futurama Can Wait: Schools and Hospitals Should Come First in Any Stimulus Package," historian Mike Davis takes issue with Obama's stated priorities:

We are now at a crash site, and our priority should be to save the victims, not change the tires or repair the fender, much less build a new car. In the triage situation that now confronts the president-elect, keeping local schools and hospitals open should be the first concern, rebuilding bridges and expanding ports would come next, and rescuing bank shareholders at the very end of the line.

Davis' reference to the current Bush administration-engineered $700 billion "financial rescue package" is quite prescient, as no serious attempt to fix the economic meltdown can be successful if it begins be rewarding those who created the disaster to begin with. Beyond this, his argument is essentially that rebuilding the nation's infrastructure must take a back-seat to what he considers to be more humanitarian concerns: education and health care. Yet Davis does not fully explain why it makes sense to separate an immediate investment in schools and hospitals from a massive Green Deal-like socioeconomic program, especially since a growing green-collar job sector, along with higher taxes for the rich, would help fund the social services he thinks must be prioritized.

While not fully articulated, Davis' underlying premise is that a Green Deal might be utilized by elites to shore-up the system much like the New Deal is credited with having "saved capitalism." Progressive activists should therefore be wary of capital-intensive infrastructure development programs that do not offer immediate assistance to those being victimized by the economic crisis. This is an honorable sentiment indeed, yet it fails to consider the degree to which providing work for the jobless and preventing deaths as a result of collapsed bridges can be viewed as a humanitarian matter. Yet much more striking, given the particular focus of his work, is Davis' failure to clearly delineate how climate change should (or for that matter should not) be addressed in terms of socioeconomic policy.

He seems to be arguing--or at least implying--that climate change is not as serious a problem as many alarmists would have us believe, and that it fits the pattern of capitalism's tendency to cause environmental catastrophes that are subsequently manufactured into "natural disasters" easily exploited by those in power (See Davis' Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World). Still, Davis comes nowhere close to claiming that the global climate crisis is ultimately unreal or even unduly exaggerated. Indeed, the question of ongoing environmental devastation caused by human activity does not factor much at all into his pithy criticism of "Obama's Futurama." Instead, Davis refers to the incoming president's economic team as a "powerful and desperate coalition of interests...aligned to support the Keynesian shock-and-awe of major public works," but he does not characterize such elite support for government spending as in any way related to environmental policies.

So even assuming that a Green Deal would ultimately amount to another attempt to save the capitalist ship before it sinks, it's difficult to make a strong case for that outcome being worse than what may happen if we don't do anything (or at least not enough) to address the climate crisis. Maybe this sentiment is attached to the fact that many leftists today--unlike during previous eras--have an easier time imagining the end of the world than they do imagining the end of capitalism. Perhaps Mike Davis is thus simply staying true to his Marxist roots by choosing to focus on socioeconomic conditions rather than fret over the decreasing size of the earth's polar ice caps.

Yet it seems logical that environmental and economic reforms should from now on be increasingly integrated in some context, whether it be a Green Deal or in another manner. Indeed, even military planners are very seriously examining the potential threats posed by climate change and preparing "national security" strategies accordingly. For instance a Pentagon commissioned study published in October 2003 and released to the public in February 2004, "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and its Implications for United States National Security", warned that

Violence and disruption stemming from the stresses created by abrupt changes in the climate pose a different type of threat to national security than we are accustomed to today. Military confrontation may be triggered by a desperate need for natural resources such as energy, food and water rather than by conflicts over ideology, religion, or national honor.

By this account there is no telling exactly how the global political-economy will be affected by the climate crisis, and it could under the right conditions produce unprecedented levels of migration accompanying a frightening wave of "resource wars" that would make the invasion and occupation of Iraq seem quaint. Especially in this light: though not perfect, a Green Deal that would seek to divert money away from the military-industrial complex and send it towards a broad array of domestic necessities might be the wisest course of action to follow at this critical juncture.

Keep Your Eyes on Sasha: The Littlest Obama Will Bring Real Change to the White House

A descendant of slaves, seven year-old Natasha (Sasha) Obama will soon be the youngest person to move into the White House since John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1961. And while she will not be in Cabinet meetings or receive "national-security" briefings, she does have the ear of the President (not to mention a lock on his heart). But more importantly, Sasha is an uncorrupted child who is just coming into consciousness and in whose eyes one can still see the glimmering magic of youth. While moving into the White House will surely change her, she--with her vibrancy and innocence--will surely also change the White House. Perhaps the ghost of Sally Hemmings will even find some rest.

Seen here (thanks to a paparazzo) sporting what admirers are calling "sassy vacation sunglasses" as she deplaned yesterday in Hawaii with her father in tow, less visible but more revealing is her multicolored peace sign t-shirt. On one level Sasha's fashion underscores the unfortunate fact that the 1960s counterculture and its symbols have become highly marketable and heavily marketed commodities. Yet this troubling development aside (although it should be examined and discussed in general), there is something fortuitously luminous about seeing the strong, black, and beautiful daughter of our new JFK/MLK hybrid president strutting her stuff in a sparkling peace sign without a care in the world (granted, no one was supposed to see this image...!?). If symbols matter, and they do, Sasha's a wonderful symbol for what the next generation of influential Americans may look like.

Don't Let the Shoe Hit You on the Way Out!

An Iraqi reporter hurls a shoe at Bush during his final visit to the country that the 43 US president chose to unilaterally invade and occupy. Said the man: "This is a goodbye kiss, you dog!"

Given the structure of international law, after Jan. 20, Bush may have much more than just flying footwear to be concerned about...

SAY IT LOUD: I'M GREEN AND I'M PROUD!

"I inhaled frequently. That was the point."
--Barack Obama, Nov. 2006

IF the Green Revolution is truly upon us, then nothing short of full decriminalization AND rationally implemented legalization of cannabis must be central to the "change we seek." Now is the time to begin a massive campaign geared towards pressuring (gently or more forcefully) President Obama and his minions to move beyond the insane folly of America's "controlled substances" policies--the tragedy of which is exemplified by a longstanding federal anti-marijuana bias that harms far more people than the outlawed plant itself ever has in its centuries of existence. Indeed, cannabis has numerous proven benefits, from its use as medicine for chronically ill patients to sustainable industrial/agricultural product, not to mention as a globally popular recreational drug used widely as a non-toxic alternative to alcohol as well as a mild (sacramental) psychoactive agent.

For reasons neither completely known nor relevant, 4:20 as a time and 4/20 as a date have become known internationally as symbols of cannabis culture, the latter marking a recognized annual day of celebration. Yet, April 20 is at this point an apolitical event that may in balance harm more than help the serious and important work of cannabis advocacy. All of this much change. April 20, 2009 ought to be a day when people of conscience across the world come together to call for an end to the "War on Drugs" by echoing the reggae prophet Peter Tosh's simple yet profound demand: "Legalize it!"

After Bush: A Center-Left Obama Coalition?

In 2004 after Bush and Cheney “won” another bitterly divided and contested election, Karl Rove heralded the dawning of a new "permanent Republican majority" driven by commitment to conservative cultural values at home and unwavering militarism abroad. Evangelical Christians in the American heartland along with suburban “soccer moms” (or what Sarah Palin calls “hockey moms”) were supposed to constitute the foot soldiers of Rove’s movement, which, in practice, was an extension of the “Reagan Revolution.” This Republican coalition was obviously not as strong as its leaders liked to suggest, and there is no doubt that the recent unpopularity of the Bush-Cheney regime contributed greatly to the GOP’s dramatically sudden demise (and certainly the ineffectual McCain-Palin campaign did not help the conservative cause, nor did the timing of the current financial crisis). Yet in the wake of losing the 2004 elections and facing four more years of Republican control in the White House and Congress, there was a concerted, and it now appears highly successful counter-movement launched by progressives who strategically chose to work with, if not from within, the Democratic Party.

The origins of this center/left coalition date most immediately to Howard Dean’s 2004 primary campaign during which he lost the nomination to John Kerry, but attracted media attention for having produced a largely youth-based, internet-run campaign that called for ending the Iraq War and drawing national focus towards such issues as health care, education, and energy reform. Not nearly as radical as the platforms of progressives like Nader or Dennis Kucinich, Dean’s ideas caught-on within mainstream liberal circles for this exact reason. As such, the Dean approach became a viable third-way between excessive compromise and excessive purism. This was at least the perspective of groups like MoveOn.org, which generated a great deal of grassroots enthusiasm for Dean’s campaign in large part as a refocusing of antiwar activity that had tried and failed in March 2003 to affect a change in policy by staging massive 1960s-style street demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq.

The Dean campaign offered a bottom-up organizing and fund-raising model that became a potent antidote to Karl Rove’s political machinery. Especially in the wake of their 2004 electoral defeat, activist Democrats in groups like MoveOn and Daily Kos (founded in 2002) redoubled their efforts to promote liberal and progressive media outlets while developing and strengthening new left-leaning think-tanks and policy groups designed to refurbish the infrastructure of Democratic electoral politics. For instance in 2003 former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta founded the Center for American Progress (CAP) as a means of directly countering the influence exercised by conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Dean, meanwhile, became chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2005 and began pursuing a “fifty-state strategy” designed after the goals of his presidential campaign. Dean’s party leadership produced the opening salvo of the GOP’s demise during the 2006 mid-term elections, when Democrats regained control of both the Senate and the House. It is difficult to say how much of the antiwar left participated in this electoral repudiation of the Republicans, but it was widely believed that the Democratic victory clearly signaled a public mandate to end the Iraq War. When the new Democratic Congress subsequently failed to deliver on this promise, there was a logical conclusion among many that only a change of power in the White House would allow the antiwar/progressive wing of the party to make any real policy difference.

Another key factor in the emergence of this new center/left formation has been a vibrant constellation of media outlets connected to, but also distinct from the growing liberal and progressive “blogoshpere.” Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!, a news magazine that originated in 1996 through New York’s Pacifica Radio affiliate and now broadcasts on over 700 public radio and television stations, as well as the internet, bills itself as the “largest community media collaboration in the United States.” Democracy Now! has become a leading communications medium for progressives and some radicals affiliated with the alternative/IndyMedia movement, including activists aligned with both the Democratic and Green Parties.

At the same time, a somewhat surprising avenue of critical left-leaning commentary has emerged on MSNBC, a cable news collaboration between NBC (General Electric) and Microsoft. The network began operating in 1996, the same year that FOX News went on air, and its current flagship program Countdown with Keith Olbermann began in 2003. Having become known for his scathing criticism of the Iraq War and virtually every policy of the Bush-Cheney regime, Olbermann offers his outspoken political commentary and news coverage within a humorous and often fiercely satirical format designed to attract younger viewers and people who want to be entertained as well as informed. That said, Olbermann and his frequent guests from Newsweek (Richard Wolfe), The Nation (Christopher Hayes), and the Washington Post (Eugene Robinson), for example, combine liberal and progressive analyses presented in an intellectually stimulating manner.

Having first been a contributor and guest-host on Countdown, former gay rights (ACT UP!) activist Rachel Maddow recently began hosting her own show following Olbermann; The Rachel Maddow Show has become one of MSNBC’s top-rated programs while Maddow continues hosting her daily show on Air America Radio, a nationally syndicated liberal and progressive “talk-radio” network launched in 2004 as a potential antidote to the popularity of conservative voices like that of Rush Limbaugh. Both Olbermann and Maddow are openly supportive of Obama while also being critical of his more conservative tendencies. MSNBC is earning a reputation as the diametric opposite of FOX News—owned by Rupert Murcdoch’s News Corporation—which functions essentially as a rightwing propaganda outlet and makes very little effort to disguise its ideological bent. Other significant elements of this left-leaning media constellation include news/commentary websites such as The Huffington Post.com, Common Dreams.org, and TruthOut.org.

Perhaps the most interesting development of all within this context has been the large national and international popularity of the Comedy Central Network’s “fake news” programs, The Daily Show with John Stewart (1999-present) and The Colbert Report (2005-Present). Appealing initially to younger audiences who took no interest in the stale format of television news, John Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s programs have helped re-shape the commercial media landscape by offering brilliant and often hilarious political/social satire that has been devastatingly critical of Bush and Cheney while providing real news analysis embedded within the framework of satirical comedy sketches. Stewart delivers an openly left-leaning nightly “fake news” cast that parodies cable news programs by making fun of how they sensationally cover events of the day. The latter third segment of The Daily Show consists of guest interviews often featuring political leaders, for instance former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf appeared with Stewart in September 2006, and Barack Obama made his forth overall appearance (this one by satellite) on the Thursday prior to his being elected President. Stephen Colbert spun his program off from his role as a correspondent on The Daily Show, and very effectively plays an ultraconservative FOX News-like television host who refers to FOX's Bill O’Reilly as “papa bear.” Although it can easily be overstated, one should not underestimate the influence of Stewart and Colbert in terms of connecting with and informing young people while contributing to the foundation of a newly awakened progressive political culture with media icons ranging from Amy Goodman to Rachel Maddow.

Barack Obama’s rapid ascendancy is in many ways connected to this conjuncture; his public opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2002—while still a state senator—propelled him to victory in the Democratic primary over Hillary Clinton, who had been the odds-on favorite to win the nomination but whose vote to authorize funding for the war made her highly vulnerable. At the same time, while eventually gaining strong support from the corporate/financial sector, Obama’s campaign first developed along the lines of the Dean model and was able to build an unprecedented grassroots mobilization that capitalized on the Illinois Senator’s personal charisma and political savvy. As the campaign progressed, the idea of President Barack Hussein Obama became a powerful national and international symbol for generational, racial, and political transformation. In this manner, the global social movement that arose in support of Obama drew rhetorical strength from articulating this moment in history as an opportunity to reengage the fulfillment of Martin Luther King’s “Dream,” which in its broadest sense is a vision of a world free from racism, militarism, and poverty.

If this is a highly sympathetic and perhaps exaggerated portrayal of the nascent possibility presented by an “Obama Revolution,” it is presented in order to do justice to the tremendous significance of what occurred on November 4, 2008. Voters in the United States did not just elect the first African- American president, although the image of the Obama family on stage in Grant Park and their imminent arrival in the White House is surely historic. But there was a much larger, indeed a global victory against the forces of reactionary hatred being celebrated by weeping students at Spellman College in Atlanta and jubilant crowds in Harlem; a throng of hope-filled revelers surrounding the White House and spilling into city streets across the country. In Kenya (where a national holiday was declared), Indonesia, Japan, throughout Europe, both Israel and Palestine: the world celebrated hope having triumphed over fear.

There are, of course, serious questions about how far to the left of center Obama’s administration and the Democratic Congress will venture. John Podesta now leads the Obama transition team, and has helped install another former Clinton-insider as the new White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who is reviled by many progressives for his hawkish stance on Middle-East issues. These developments do not bode well for an immediate and decisive break with the status-quo, but neither do they preclude the development of a center/left coalition in alliance with supportive elements within the Obama orbit. It will obviously be essential to maintain a parallel track of organizing from outside the system, and in this sense there are already a number of arenas in which the left should begin articulating an oppositional stance to the new administration, the war in Afghanistan for instance. With Emanuel now in-place one might also imagine that Israel-Palestine policy could soon become a contentious issue. In fact, Emanuel’s selection may represent how the centrist Democratic Leadership Committee (DLC) associated with the Clintons is attempting to assert control over Obama’s agenda, which might otherwise lean in a more progressive direction closer to Dean’s wing of the party.

Nonetheless, the Obama campaign as a social movement has reopened space for public participation and progressive agitation. At the same time, the current financial meltdown has ignited the possibility of organizing a reformist coalition around the goal of pressuring for an FDR-like “Green New Deal” whereby current economic and environmental crises can be addressed through a strategically designed green jobs, infrastructure, and social services program that would aim to slowly dismantle the national security state by diverting resources to an ascendant environmental/welfare state. There is no guarantee that such a movement could be successfully built and/or maintained in the coming months and years—indeed, there is much reason to believe that Obama will be a disappointment to the left on several fronts, from trade and corporate taxes to military spending. And yet, the new President-elect set the stage rhetorically for what may be possible in the days ahead: “this victory alone is not the change we seek — it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.”