ARCHIVES: Chris Hitchens, the Great Apostate

Adonis Diaries—

Who is this late Christopher Hitchens?  Originally from England, Hitchens died at the age of 62 in Houston.  He suffered from cancer and published his health condition on his column. Hitchens was a confirmed atheist and a “Marxist”, but changed sides and ideology since the second term of Bush Junior.  At first, Hitchens wrote of Bush Jr. ” He is so amazingly unintelligent, not cultured beyond imagination, and unable to express in any basic way.  The worst is that Bush Jr. is very proud of his shortcoming and deficiencies…”    Hitchens reverted and supported loudly  Bush Jr. in the second term. Hitchens is claimed to be friend with Salman Rushdi, Ben Killer, and a staunch enemy of director Michael Moore…

Late Christopher Hitchens said: “I’m occasionally asked whether I still consider myself a Marxist.  Even if my “faith” had lapsed, I wouldn’t advertise it, not from shame at having been wrong (although admittedly this would be a factor) but rather from fear of arousing even a faint suspicion of opportunism.  To borrow from the lingo of a former academic fad, if, in public life, the “signifier” is “I’m no longer a Marxist,” then the “signified” usually is, “I’m selling out.”  No doubt one can, in light of further study and life experience, come to repudiate past convictions.  One might also decide that youthful ideals, especially when the responsibilities of family kick in and the prospects for radical change dim while the certainty of one’s finitude sharpens, are too heavy a burden to bear.”

Norman G. Finkelstein (currently writing an introduction to the new edition 

The Rise and Fall of Palestine) has targeted late Christopher Hitchens as a political apostate. I republished the parts related to Hitchens with slight modifications for easy read .  Norman G. Finkelstein wrote: “Depending on where along the political spectrum power is situated, apostates almost always make their corrective leap in that direction, discovering the virtues of the status quo. “The last thing you can be accused of is having turned your coat,” Thomas Mann wrote a convert to National Socialism right after Hitler’s seizure of power.  ”You always wore it the `right’ way around.”

“If apostasy weren’t conditioned by power considerations, one would anticipate roughly equal movements in both directions.  But that’s never been the case.  The would-be apostate almost always pulls towards power’s magnetic field, rarely away”.

“Although a tacit assumption equates unpredictability with independence of mind, it might just as well signal lack of principle.  As if to bear out this point, Hitchens has now repackaged himself a full-fledged apostate.  For maximum pyrotechnic effect, Hitchens knew that the “awakening” had to be as abrupt as it was extreme: if yesterday he counted himself a Trotskyist and Chomsky a comrade, better now to announce that he supports Bush and counts Paul Wolfowitz a comrade.  Their fates crossed when Wolfowitz and Hitchens both immediately glimpsed in September 11 the long-awaited opportunity: for Wolfowitz, to get into Iraq, for Hitchens, to get out of the left.  While public display of angst doesn’t itself prove authenticity of feeling (sometimes it might prove the reverse), a sharp political break must, for one living a political life, be a wrenching emotional experience.

“Hitchens collects his essays during the months preceding the U.S. attack on Iraq in The Long Short War.   He sneers that former comrades organizing the global anti-war demonstrations “do not think that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy at all” (emphasis in original),  and the many millions marching in them consist of the “blithering ex-flower child or ranting neo-Stalinist.”  Similarly, he ridicules activists pooling their meager resources for refreshments at a fundraiser – they are not among the chosen at a Vanity Fair soiree – as “potluck peaceniks” and “potluckistas.”

“Hitchens is at pains to inform readers that all his newly acquired friends are “friends for life.”  As with the solicitude he keeps expressing for the rights of Arab women, it seems that Hitchens protests too much.  The famous aphorism quoted by him that nations have no permanent allies, only permanent interests, might be said to apply, mutatis mutandis, to himself as well.  Indeed, his description of a psychopath – “incapable of conceiving an interest other than his own and perhaps genuinely indifferent to the well-being of others” – comes perilously close to a self-portrait.

Freud once wrote: “To discover our true human nature, just reverse society’s moral exhortations: if the Commandment says not to commit adultery, it’s because we all want to”.  This simple game can be played with Hitchens as well: when he avows, “I attempt to write as if I did not care what reviewers said, what peers thought, or what prevailing opinion might be,” one should read, “My every word is calculated for its public effect.”

“Hitchens has riotous fun heaping contempt on several of the volunteer “human shields” who left Iraq before the bombing began. They “obviously didn’t have the guts,” he jeers, hunkered down in his Washington foxhole.  Bearing witness to his own bravery, Hitchens reports in March 2003 that, although even the wife of New York Times columnist Tom Friedman is having doubts about going to war, “I am fighting to keep my nerve” – truly a profile in courage, as he exiles himself in the political wilderness, alongside the Bush administration, Congress, a majority of U.S. public opinion, and his employers in the major media.

“Outraged at the taunt that he who preaches war should perhaps consider fighting it, Hitchens impatiently recalls that, since September 11, “civilians at home are no safer than soldiers abroad,” and that, in fact, he’s not just a but the main target: “The whole point of the present phase of conflict is that we are faced with tactics that are directed primarily at civilians….

“It is amazing that this essential element of the crisis should have taken so long to sink into certain skulls” (emphasis in original).   No doubt modesty and tact forbid Hitchens from drawing the obvious comparison: while cowardly American soldiers frantically covered themselves in protective gear and held their weapons at the ready, he patrolled his combat zone in Washington, D.C. unencumbered.    Lest we forget, Hitchens recalls that ours is “an all-volunteer army” where soldiers willingly exchange “fairly good pay” for “obedience” to authority: “Who would have this any other way?”  For sure, not those who will never have to “volunteer.”

“It’s a standing question as to whether the power of words ultimately derives from their truth value or if a sufficiently nimble mind can endow words with comparable force regardless of whether they are bearers of truth or falsity.  For those who want to believe that the truth content of words does matter, reading the new Hitchens comes as a signal relief. Although redoubtable as a left-wing polemicist, as a right-wing one he only produces doubt, not least about his own mental poise.

“Deriding Chomsky’s “very vulgar” harnessing of facts, Hitchens wants to go beyond this “empiricism of the crudest kind.”  His own preferred epistemology is on full display, for all to judge, in Long Short War.  To prove that, after supporting dictatorial regimes in the Middle East for 70 years, the U.S. has abruptly reversed itself and now wants to bring democracy there, he cites “conversations I have had on this subject in Washington.”  To demonstrate the “glaringly apparent” fact that Saddam “infiltrated, or suborned, or both” the U.N. inspection teams in Iraq, he adduces the “incontrovertible case” of an inspector offered a bribe by an Iraqi official: “The man in question refused the money, but perhaps not everybody did.”  Citing “the brilliant film called Nada,” Hitchens proposes this radical redefinition of terrorism: “the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.”

“Al-Qaida is accordingly terrorist because it posits an impossible world of “clerical absolutism” but, judging by this definition, the Nazi party wasn’t terrorist because it posited a possible world without Jews.  Claiming that every country will resort to preemptive war, and that preemptive is indistinguishable from preventive war, Hitchens infers that all countries “will invariably decide that violence and first use are justified” and none can be faulted on this account – which makes you wonder why he’s so hot under the collar about Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait.

“Hitchens maintains that “there is a close…fit between the democratically minded and the pro-American” in the Middle East – like “President for Life” Hosni Mubarak, King Abdullah of Jordan…; that Washington finally grasped that “there were `root causes’ behind the murder-attacks” (emphasis in original) – but didn’t Hitchens ridicule any allusion to “root causes” as totalitarian apologetics?

That “racism” is “anti-American as nearly as possible by definition”.

That “evil” can be defined as “the surplus value of the psychopath” – is there a Bartlett‘s for worst quotations?; that the U.S.’s rejoining of U.N.E.S.C.O. during the Iraq debate proved its commitment to the U.N

That “empirical proofs have been unearthed” showing that Iraq didn’t comply with U.N. resolutions to disarm; that since the U.N. solicits U.S. support for multilateral missions, it’s “idle chatter” to accuse the U.S. of acting unilaterally in Iraq.

That the likely killing of innocent civilians in “hospitals, schools, mosques and private homes” shouldn’t deter the U.S. from attacking Iraq because it is proof of Saddam’s iniquity that he put civilians in harm’s way.

That those questioning billions of dollars in postwar contracts going to Bush administration cronies must prefer them going to “some windmill-power concern run by Naomi Klein” – is this dry or desiccated wit?

“On one page Hitchens states that the world fundamentally changed after September 11 because “civilians are in the front line as never before,” but on another page he states that during the 1970s, “I was more than once within blast or shot range of the IRA and came to understand that the word `indiscriminate’ meant that I was as likely to be killed as any other bystander.”

“Hitchens states that, even if the U.S. doesn’t attack or threaten to attack, “Saddam Hussein is not going to survive. His regime is on the verge of implosion” (emphasis in original), but on another page he states that “only the force of American arms, or the extremely credible threat of that force, can bring a fresh face to power.”  He states that the U.S. seems committed to completely overhauling Iraq’s political system, but on another page he states that replacing Saddam with “another friendly general…might be ideal from Washington’s point of view.”  On one page he states that “Of course it’s about oil, stupid” (emphasis in original), but on another page he states that “it was not for the sake of oil” that the U.S. went to war.

“In one paragraph Hitchens states that the U.S. must attack Iraq even if it swells the ranks of al-Qaida, but in the next paragraph he states that “the task of statecraft” is not to swell its ranks.  In one sentence he claims to be persuaded by the “materialist conception of history,” but in the next sentence he states that “a theory that seems to explain everything is just as good at explaining nothing.”  In the first half of one sentence he argues that, since “one cannot know the future,” policy can’t be based on likely consequences, but in the second half he concludes that policy should be based on “a reasoned judgment about the evident danger.”

“Writing before the invasion, Hitchens argued that the U.S. must attack even if Saddam offers self-exile in order to capture and punish this heinous criminal.  Shouldn’t he urge an attack on the U.S. to capture and punish Kissinger?  And, it must attack because Saddam started colluding with al-Qaida after the horrific crimes of September 11.  Should the U.S. have been attacked for colluding with Saddam’s horrific crimes, not after but while they unfolded, before September 11?  France is the one “truly `unilateralist’ government on the Security Council,” according to Hitchens, a proof being that 20 years ago it sank a Greenpeace vessel – next to which the U.S. wars in Central America apparently pale by comparison.

“Hitchens assails French President Jacques Chirac, in a masterful turn of phrase, as a “balding Joan of Arc in drag,” and blasts France with the full arsenal of Berlitz‘s “most commonly used French expressions.”  For bowing to popular anti-war sentiment in Germany, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder stands accused of “cheaply” playing “this card,” while in the near-unanimous opposition of the Turkish people to war Hitchens detects evidence of “ugly egotism and selfishness.”

“Hitchens says that Wolfowitz wants “democracy and emancipation” – which must be why Wolfowitz rebuked the Turkish military for not stepping in after the Turkish people vetoed participation in the war.  A “principled policy cannot be measured,” Hitchens sniffs, “by the number of people who endorse it.”  But for a principled democrat the number of people endorsing a policy does decide whether to implement it.

“Hitchens’s notion of democracy is his “comrade,” ex-Trotskyist but ever-opportunist Kanan Makiya, conjuring up a “complex and ambitious plan” to totally remake Iraq in Boston and presenting it for ratification at an émigré conference in London.  The invective he hurls at French, German and Turkish leaders for heeding the popular will shows that Hitchens hasn’t, at any rate, completely broken faith with his past: contemptuous of “transient polls of opinion,” he’s still a Trotskyist at heart, guiding the benighted masses to the Promised Land, if through endless wars and safely from the rear.

“Hitchens resembles no one so much as the Polish émigré hoaxers, Jerzy Kosinski, who, shrewdly sizing up intellectual culture in America, used to give, before genuflecting Yale undergraduates, lectures on such topics as “The Art of the Self: the theory of `Le Moi Poetique’ (Binswanger).”  Translation: for this wanger it’s all about moi.  Kosinski no doubt had a good time of it until, outed as a fraud, he had enough good grace, which Hitchens plainly lacks, to commit suicide.  And for Hitchens it’s also lucrative nonsense that he’s peddling.

“It’s not exactly a martyr’s fate defecting from The Nation, a frills-free liberal magazine, toAtlantic Monthly, the well-heeled house organ of Zionist crazies.  Although Kissinger affected to be a “solitary, gaunt hero,” Hitchens says, in reality he was just a “corpulent opportunist.”  It sounds familiar.

Note 1: Norman G. Finkelstein is currently writing a political memoir, which will serve as the introduction to a new edition of his book, The Rise and Fall of Palestine, to be published by New Press next year. 

Note 2: You may read the other parts on apostates in http://adonis49.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/noam-chomsky-the-apostates-preferred-target/

••


Tony Blair whitewashes imperialism’s role in the Middle East

By Jordan Shilton, wsws.org

tonyBlairPodium

In an article for Britain’s Observer newspaper, published January 26, former prime minister Tony Blair claimed that the source of conflict in the Middle East and internationally today was to be found in religious extremism.

Between 1997 and 2007, Blair led a government that oversaw a policy of imperialist militarism abroad and attacks on democratic rights domestically. Under his premiership, Britain took part in wars in Kosovo (1999), Sierra Leone (2000), Afghanistan (2001) and, most infamously, Iraq (2003).

His claim that the roots of conflict today lie in extremist religion is an attempt to obscure his own responsibility, together with the United States, for the destabilisation of the Middle East and the stoking of ethnic and sectarian tensions. The military interventions of his government embraced this as a strategy to devastating effect, as was seen in the promotion of ethnic divisions between the Kosovo Albanians and Serbs in the Balkans, and the stirring up of religious differences in Iraq, with the result that the country is now virtually split into Sunni, Shia and Kurdish regions.

Blair seeks to convince his readers otherwise. His newfound commitment to democratic values and the fight against extremism is, according to him, “based on my experience post-9/11 of how countries whose people were freed from dictatorship have then had democratic aspirations thwarted by religious extremism.”

Such assertions, which portray the military interventions of Britain and the United States after 2001 as altruistic acts motivated by humanitarian considerations, produced dissent even within ruling circles. Jonathan Eyal, of the Royal United Services Institute think tank told the Guardian, “It was not the lack of sufficient knowledge about history and religion which led to the Iraqi debacle, but the lack of restraint among politicians who had all the relevant information at their fingertips.”

The brutality of the Iraq operation and its consequences has been well documented, with some estimates suggesting that up to 1 million Iraqis have lost their lives since 2003. Less than two weeks before the appearance of Blair’s article, a 250-page submission to the prosecutor’s office of the International Criminal Court (ICC) by the German-based European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights and the British law firm Public Interest Lawyers urged the ICC to take action against systematic torture by British forces that they stated amounted to war crimes.

Due for publication later this year, the report of the Chilcott Inquiry is widely expected to contain even more evidence exposing the lies and disregard for international law that accompanied the drive to war with Iraq.

tonyBlairBWWriting as if he had been an innocent bystander, Blair offers himself as a modern-day crusader for religious tolerance: “All over the region, and including in Iraq, where exactly the same sectarianism threatens the right of the people to a democratic future, such a campaign has to be actively waged. It is one reason why the Middle East matters so much and why any attempt to disengage is so wrong and short-sighted.”

Behind the talk of an educational campaign against extremism, his caution against “disengagement” reveals Blair’s real concern. He is seeking to justify further imperialist interventions in the region in defence of the interests of Britain and the US. Bogus “humanitarian” arguments have been used to justify every military intervention and war since the Balkan conflict in the 1990s, including the war in Iraq and the intervention against Libya in 2011 to overthrow the Gaddafi regime. All of this has been legitimised by forces formerly deemed “left” or anti-war, who have fully embraced the humanitarian pretensions of if not the toxic war criminal Blair, then his ilk.

The hypocrisy of Blair’s commitment to “democracy” should be lost on no one. It was precisely such arguments, about the need for an “ideological” fight against extremism and “terrorism,” that served as the basis for the attacks on democratic rights that he led when in power.

In 2005, the Blair government proposed a resolution to the UN Security Council urging not only military measures against “terrorists,” but also ideological ones. It proposed that member states institute laws to ban the “incitement” or “encouragement” of terrorist activity. In Britain, the result of this was the Terrorism Act 2006, which made these actions criminal offences and has since been used to prosecute individuals purely on the strength of their political or religious views and in the absence of any evidence of ties to terrorist groups.

Blair’s Observer piece makes the case for even more repressive measures. Noting that the development of technology had created a “global conversation,” he went on to argue that the ability to use the Internet and other means to spread extremist views must be countered. He declared, “We have to be prepared to take the security measures necessary for our immediate protection.”

The warning over the danger posed by religious extremism came only several months after Blair spoke out strongly in favour of military action in Syria on the side of the opposition, dominated by Islamist extremist elements close to Al Qaeda. Following the alleged poison gas attack last August, he was heavily critical of current Labour Party leader Ed Miliband for his tactical opposition to a military attack.

Last week, on a tour of Egypt in his role as “peace envoy” to the Israel-Palestine conflict, Blair issued a statement giving his full backing to the military regime of General Al-Sisi, who came to power in a coup last July and has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of opposition protesters.

Such a record was of little concern to Blair, who declared in a televised interview, “The fact is, the Muslim Brotherhood tried to take the country away from its basic values of hope and progress. The army have intervened, at the will of the people, but in order to take the country to the next stage of its development, which should be democratic. We should be supporting the new government in doing that.”

Only two weeks previously, Blair gave an address at a memorial service for former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, a figure widely regarded as a war criminal for his role in the massacre of Palestinian civilians in Lebanon in 1982 and his brutal military assaults on the occupied territories when in power. Blair hailed him as a great leader who had not been afraid to make “difficult decisions.”

For upholding the interests of the imperialist powers, Blair has been richly rewarded and is now a multimillionaire. Alongside his activities as a “peace” envoy in the Middle East, he leads the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. As he notes in the Observer article, this foundation is active across 22 countries, promoting Blair’s perspective of religious intolerance forming the basis of the world’s conflicts. Developed in collaboration with the Harvard Divinity School, a new web site that will report on religion and conflict to be launched later this year was hailed by Blair, along with a university master’s programme that his foundation has played a role in creating.



OpEds: The American Dream is Dead

Obama killed it
by MIKE WHITNEY
barack_obama_liar-450x320

“The U.S. worked hard to create the American dream of opportunity. But today, that dream is a myth.” Economist Joseph Stiglitz, Financial Times

If you follow the financial news, you already know that the American people are on an epic downer. Just check out some of these headlines I pulled up in a five minute Internet search and you’ll see what I mean:

“Gloom and doom? Americans more pessimistic about future” Las Vegas Review

“U.S. Standard of Living Index Sinks to 10-Month Low; Expectations for future standard of living drops more than current satisfaction” Gallup

“Americans Still Pessimistic About Economy–Almost 70 percent think the economy is in bad shape” Time Magazine

‘Slipping behind’: Are we becoming a nation of pessimists?” NBC News

Income Inequality in the United States Fuels Pessimism and Threatens Social Cohesion” Center for American Progress.

And here’s my personal favorite:

“NBC/WSJ poll: 60 percent say fire every member of Congress” NBC News

Pessimism, pessimism, and more pessimism. It’s like the whole country is on the brink of despair. Maybe Phil Graham was right, after all. Maybe we are just a nation of whiners. But I kind of doubt it. What’s really going on can be summed up in one word: Frustration. People are frustrated with the government, frustrated with their jobs, frustrated with their shitty, stagnant wages, frustrated with their droopy incomes, frustrated with their ripoff health care, frustrated with living paycheck to paycheck, frustrated with their measly cat-food retirement plan, frustrated with their dissembling, flannel-mouth president, frustrated with the fact that their kids can’t find jobs, and frustrated with the prevaricating US media that keeps palavering about that delusional chimera called the American Dream.

What dream? The dream that America is the land of “land of opportunity”?

Tell that to the 23-year old college grad who’s stuck delivering pizzas to try to put a dent in the $65,000 tab he ran up getting his Masters in engineering. See how much he believes in the Dream.

All that stuff about “working hard and playing by the rules” has turned out to be pure bunkum, just like the “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” horsecrap or the “owning a home enters one into the middle class” thing. What a freaking joke. 6 million people have been booted out of their homes since the bubble burst, and the Pollyannas on TV still drone on about “owning a home”. Get the gun!

No one’s buying that garbage anymore. Just like no one believes that our economic system is “a level playing field”, or that our kids will have a better standard of living then our own, or that tomorrow will be better than today. Every one of those “shining city on a hill” promises have turned out to be complete hogwash. The only city on a hill you’re going to find in the US, is the privately-owned gulag where petty drug offenders are locked up for life so some chiseling hedge fund manager can report record profits to his shareholders. There’s your shining city in a nutshell.

The American people aren’t whiners. They’re just tired of the lies, that’s all. Look; the country was in the throes of the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression, but the American people rallied, right? They came out by the millions to vote for the dazzling young senator from Chicago who was going to change everything and restore America to its formal glory.

So much for that fairytale. Can you really blame the people for believing the hype and pegging their hopes on a man who never had any intention of keeping his word?

No, of course not. The people did what was expected of them. They cast their vote thinking that their vote mattered, thinking they could change the system if a solid majority supported it. But they were hoodwinked, right? Because that’s not the way the system really works. In fact, the system doesn’t really work at all. Power is just handed from one group of scheming elites to the next behind the laughable, public relations charade we call political campaigns. The whole process is designed to pull the wool over people’s eyes, and to avoid the possibility of any real change. Isn’t that how it works?

So now we’re stuck with candidate Tweedledee and everything keeps getting worse. Unemployment is deliberately kept high so big business has a permanently large pool of desperate workers it can hire for a pittance. All the profits from productivity-gains are carved up by moneybags CEOs or divvied up among shareholders instead of going to working people. And the banks are given money at zero rates so they can roll over their gargantuan pile of toxic loans at no cost to themselves or increase the leverage on their illicit hedging operations which they keep off their balance sheets and away from the prying eyes of government regulators. The entire system is rigged from top to bottom to make sure that no one who isn’t part of the inner circle is ever able to lift himself above his present, clock-punching, mind-numbing, 9 to 5 drudgery.

And now things are suddenly getting worse. And they’re getting worse because the fatcats who run the system think that working people have had it too easy for too long and they want to tighten things up. They want to trim the deficits, dismantle vital social programs, and slash the unemployment rolls. As one Paul Ryan opined, “We don’t want the safetynet to become a hammock.” Indeed. Workers, you see, have had it too cushy up to now, so Obama ‘s going to change all that.

The American people know what’s going on. They’re not as dumb as the jowly, stuffed-shirt pundits on CNBC and Bloomberg think. They can see beyond the lies and political bloviating. They know their goose is cooked. That’s why they’re so depressed, because they feel powerless. Pessimistic, frustrated and powerless. And for good reason. Take a look at this from Farai Chideya at Huffington Post:

“According to the Pew Research Center, in the first two years following the Great Recession, 93 percent of Americans lost net worth. Only 7 percent got wealthier. Forty-three percent of those sampled in a nationally-weighted survey I recently commissioned believe this is a permanent trend…

I ran the 2500-respondent query as part of an ongoing book project charting how America’s workers are faring, and (found) that nearly 35% of respondents said they had spent retirement or personal savings to supplement their wages. Twenty percent relied only on personal savings; four percent on retirement savings, like an early withdrawal from an IRA or 401k, and eleven percent spent both…

Even more arresting: 21 percent of those I surveyed agreed with the statement “In 2013, I borrowed money from friends or family specifically in order to pay household, medical or credit card bills.” (“Working on Empty: America’s Workers Are Spending Down Savings to Survive,” Huffington Post)

You’ve heard it all before. People are draining their savings just to make ends meet day to day. And what choice do they have? It’s not like they can just up-and-quit and get a better job down the street. There are no jobs! And the few jobs that are available, don’t pay a living wage. So they’re stuck. Everybody’s stuck. And you wonder why people are so glum about the future? It’s because America has changed, and not for the better.

Did you know that nearly 80 percent of the people who were questioned in a recent LearnVest and Chase Blueprint survey said the American dream involved owning a home?

Unfortunately, a mere 43 percent of those respondents said they think “achieving the American dream in this economy is possible.”

43 percent! Less than half the people believe the ideological gobbledygook we’ve been spoon-fed from Day 1. That’s got to mean something, right? It means more people are giving up, they’re throwing in the towel. Why? Because hard work, a good education and playing by the rules just doesn’t cut it anymore. The opportunities are gone, vanished, kaput. That’s what 30 years of outsourcing, offshoring and corporate-friendly policy does for a country. It turns it into a two-tiered system where all the gravy flows to the top and everyone else is left with table scraps. That’s why according to Gallup “67% of the people are Dissatisfied With Income, Wealth Distribution”. Check it out:

“Two out of three Americans are dissatisfied with the way income and wealth are currently distributed in the U.S. … Americans are much less optimistic about economic opportunity now than before the recession and financial crisis of 2008 unfolded. Prior to that, at least two in three Americans were satisfied, including a high of 77% in 2002.”

And here’s more from another Gallup survey:

“Americans’ Satisfaction With Economy Sours Most Since 2001–Public more satisfied on most other issues today than 13 years ago,” Gallup

“Americans … are significantly less satisfied with the economy and the role the U.S. plays in world affairs. The 40-percentage-point drop in Americans’ satisfaction with the economy, along with a 21-point drop in the world affairs issue…

The U.S. has seen numerous changes since early 2001, but….The biggest change in satisfaction has been with the state of the economy — now much lower than it was then, at the end of the dot-com boom and before the major recession of 2008-2009.”

No one needs Gallup to tell them that the economy stinks. We all know that. Just like we know that America is no longer the land of opportunity, which Gallup confirms as well:

“In U.S., Fewer Believe “Plenty of Opportunity” to Get Ahead–Similarly, only half say the U.S. economic system is fair.” Gallup

Of course, there’s no opportunity. Why would there be more opportunity when the government is cutting spending instead of creating jobs? That’s not how the economy works. You have to spend something, to get something. There’s no free lunch.

Obama has done nothing to help working people. He hasn’t lifted a damn finger, which is why “58 percent of Americans disapprove of his stewardship of the economy” (Wall Street Journal/NBC News and Quinnipiac University) It’s also why 78 percent said of respondents in a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll said they think the country is “on the wrong track.” And it’s also why Obama’s personal performance ratings have slipped below those of George Bush in the fifth year of his presidency. Obama has been a disaster and everyone knows it. The impact of his misrule with be felt for years to come. Just take a look at this comment by University of Michigan economist Richard Curtain who explains the dramatic change he’s seen in consumer behavior due to the policies that were put in place following the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). The quote is from an analytic piece titled “Consumer Behavior Adapts to Fundamental Changes in Expectations” Economic Outlook Conference November 21, 2013:

“I have been reporting on the economic implications of the latest twists and turns in consumer expectations at this conference for nearly four decades. From the heights of expansions to the depths of recessions, consumers had never deserted their bedrock belief that the economy would produce ever increasing levels of affluence. The Great Recession, unlike any other downturn in the past half century, has not only tarnished the American Dream, but has prompted some fundamental changes in consumer expectations and behavior.” (“Consumer Behavior Adapts to Fundamental Changes in Expectations” Economic Outlook Conference November 21, 2013, University of Michigan)

How do you like that? After 40 years of watching this stuff, Curtin says he’s noticed a “fundamental change” in the “bedrock belief that the economy would produce ever increasing levels of affluence.”

This is quite profound, I think, with far-reaching implications for the economy. The pessimism that Obama (and Congress) have generated through their policies have dampened expectations and changed people’s views about the future. Most people no longer expect their wages to increase or their financial situation to improve. For a growing number of people, the American dream is dead. This is already having an effect on personal consumption, household spending and economic growth. It’s also effecting the way people view the government, and what we think of ourselves as a nation. As Curtin notes:

(The) “deeply rooted uncertainty about future economic conditions…has been sustained by the growing recognition that no federal policy has yet emerged that will restore long term economic prosperity anytime soon for the majority of consumers. Optimism about long term job and income prospects are essential for maintaining high levels of economic motivation. Too few consumers have regained that optimism.”

Exactly. “No federal policy” has been put in place to “restore long term economic prosperity.”

That’s the whole ball o’ wax, right there. The pols have done nothing.

The pessimism we now see everywhere, can be traced back to government policy. All the blame goes to Obama and Congress. They’re the ones who ended the American Dream. They killed it.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.



Ukraine and the pro-imperialist intellectuals

Alex Lantier, wsws.org

The very presence of Slavoj Žižek should alert us to the dubious pedigree of any "progressive" organization.

The very presence of subtle imperial collaborationist Slavoj Žižek should alert us to the dubious pedigree of any “progressive” initiative.

The “Open letter on the future of Ukraine” issued by a group of Western academics and foreign policy operatives is a vile defense of the ongoing far-right protests in Ukraine supported by Washington and the European Union (EU). It peddles the old lie, repeated over nearly a quarter century of imperialist wars and interventions in Eastern Europe since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, that US and EU policy is driven only by a disinterested love of democracy and human rights.

It states, “The future of Ukrainians depends most of all on Ukrainians themselves. They defended democracy and their future 10 years ago, during the Orange Revolution, and they are standing up for those values today. As Europeans grow disenchanted with the idea of a common Europe, people in Ukraine are fighting for that idea and for their country’s place in Europe. Defending Ukraine from the authoritarian temptations of its corrupt leaders is in the interests of the democratic world.”

The identity of the imperialist powers’ local proxies demolishes the open letter’s pretense that the imperialist powers are fighting for democracy. They are relying on a core of a few thousand fascistic thugs from the Right Sector organization and the Svoboda Party to topple the Ukrainian regime in a series of street protests, replace it with a pro-EU government hostile to Moscow, and impose savage austerity measures. Washington and the EU are not fighting for democracy, but organizing a social counterrevolution.

In November, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych backed away from plans to integrate Ukraine into the EU and push through tens of billions of dollars in social cuts against workers to pay back Ukraine’s debts to the major banks. Fearing an explosion of mass protests, he accepted a bailout from Russia instead. The far-right opposition redoubled its efforts, as dueling anti-government and anti-opposition protests spread in Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking parts of the country, respectively.

Ana Palacio, another signatory. Again, the very presence of this socialite careerist and imperialist technocrat should give anyone pause as to what she's endorsing.

Ana Palacio, another signatory. Again, the very presence of this socialite careerist, cabinet member in a reactionary Spanish administration, and imperialist technocrat should give anyone pause as to worthiness of what she’s endorsing.

While EU intervention threatens Ukraine with social collapse and civil war, the open letter stands reality on its head, presenting the developments in Ukraine as a threat to the EU: “It is not too late for us to change things for the better and prevent Ukraine from being a dictatorship. Passivity in the face of the authoritarian turn in Ukraine and the country’s reintegration into a newly expanding Russian imperial sphere of interests pose a threat to the European Union’s integrity.”

In fact, neither Ukraine nor Russia has threatened to attack the EU. It is Ukraine—with its energy pipeline network, strategic military bases, and heavy industry—that is emerging as a major prize in an aggressive thrust by US and European imperialism to plunder the region and target Russia. While US and European imperialism threaten to attack Moscow’s main Middle East allies, Syria and Iran, they are threatening Russia’s main Eastern European ally, Ukraine, with regime-change or partition.

The drive to impose untrammeled imperialist domination of Eastern Europe, which began after the restoration of capitalism with escalating NATO interventions and wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, is at a very advanced stage. It is setting into motion the next campaign, for regime-change and ethnic partition in Russia, where Washington is studying a variety of ethnic groups—from Chechens, to Tatars and Circassians—whose grievances can be mobilized against Moscow.

This is raised quite directly in leading sections of the Western press. The Financial Times of London wrote Sunday, “Mr. Yanukovych and Mr. Putin are leaders of a similar type and with a similar governing model. If Ukrainians push the man in Kiev out of power, Russians might wonder why they should not do the same to the man in the Kremlin.”

By aligning themselves with the US-EU drive to dominate Eastern Europe, the signatories of the open letter are embracing what historically have been the aims of German imperialism. Berlin twice invaded Ukraine in the 20th century, in 1918 and 1941. Significantly, imperialism’s proxies in Ukraine today are the political descendants of Ukrainian fascists who helped carry out the Ukrainian Holocaust as allies of the Nazis—whose policy was to depopulate Ukraine and prepare its colonization by German settlers through mass extermination.

Now, at this year’s Munich Security Conference, top German officials stated that Berlin plans to abandon restrictions on the use of military force that Germany has obeyed since the end of World War II.

The disastrous consequences of the Soviet bureaucracy’s self-destructive policies and the light-minded approach of Mikhail Gorbachev as he moved to dissolve the USSR—believing that the concept of imperialism was a fiction invented by Marxism—are emerging fully into view.

A EuroMaidan protester during clashes with police that lasted between Jan. 19 and 22.

A EuroMaidan protester during clashes with police that lasted between Jan. 19 and 22. As seen on www.kyivpost.co, a pro-Western site. Note the quality of the body armor and preparations. 

Trotsky warned that the dissolution of the USSR would not only restore capitalism, but also transform Russia into a semi-colonial fiefdom of the imperialist powers: “A capitalist Russia could not now occupy even the third-rate position to which czarist Russia was predestined by the course of the world war. Russian capitalism today would be a dependent, semi-colonial capitalism without any prospects. Russia Number 2 would occupy a position somewhere between Russia Number 1 and India. The Soviet system with its nationalized industry and monopoly of foreign trade, in spite of all its contradictions and difficulties, is a protective system for the economic and cultural independence of the country.”

This is the agenda being laid out by imperialism and its fascist proxies: to return Russia and Ukraine to semi-colonial status through internal subversion, civil war, or external military intervention. Processes are being set into motion that threaten the deaths of millions.

Mobilizing the working class in struggle against imperialist war and neocolonial exploitation is the central task in Eastern Europe. Due warnings must be made. In the absence of such a struggle, given the bankruptcy and unpopularity of the region’s oligarchic regimes, there is every reason to think that determined fascist gangs—supported by imperialist governments and given political cover by pro-imperialist academics and diplomatic operatives [and the always obliging Western media—Eds]—will succeed in toppling existing regimes.

This underscores the reactionary role of the signatories of the open letter. Some are top diplomats or “non-governmental” imperialist operatives—such as former foreign ministers Ana Palacio of Spain and Bernard Kouchner of France, and Chris Stone and Aryeh Neier of the US State Department-linked Open Society Institute of billionaire George Soros. Most, however, are academics and intellectuals who are lending their names to give credibility to far-right reaction in Ukraine, through a foul combination of learned ignorance and historic blindness.

Some of the names on the list of signatories evoke regret—such as Fritz Stern, a historian who was once capable of writing seriously on historical questions.

Others, like that of postmodernist charlatan Slavoj Zizek, come as no surprise. They only confirm the alignment of affluent sections of the middle class with imperialist brigandage, and the reactionary role of pseudo-left thought in training mouthpieces for imperialism.

After decades of intellectual war on Marxism in universities and the media, cultural life is in a disastrous state. Hostile to the Marxist conceptions of imperialism and the role of material interests in driving its policies, these layers are left unmoved by imperialist crimes—the destruction of Fallujah during the US occupation of Iraq, the drone murder campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their pens spring into action, however, when EU politicians excite their moral glands by denouncing regimes targeted for imperialist intervention. They can be led by the nose, even behind fascists, with a few empty invocations of human rights.

Alex Lantier is a senior political analyst with wsws.org, an education resource of the Social Equality Party.



Do Obama and Democrats Really Want To Raise the Minimum Wage?

memphis_sanitation_worker

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

$10.10 an hour isn’t much of a raise, but it’s better than a sharp stick in the eye. The truth is that rhetoric about “passing a jobs bill”, “universal pre-K” and raising the minimum wage are things Democrats dust off to reinforce their brand, only when when Republicans are in a position to block them. That makes them branding exercises, not political deeds they intend to accomplish.

“…when President Obama was candidate Obama he campaigned on a promise to put legislation through Congress to raise the minimum wage…”

President Obama and national Democratic party spokespeople now agree that the minimum wage ought to be raised, and the mighty executive pen of the White House will soon force federal contractors to pay workers at least $10.10 an hour. Though this only applies to federal contractors, and can be rolled back if Republicans win the White House in 2016 it IS better than a sharp stick in the eye. It’s also something the president could have done five years ago, during his first hours in office.

Back in 2007 and 2008, when President Obama was candidate Obama he campaigned on a promise to put legislation through Congress to raise the minimum wage, and to reform labor law so as to make it easier for workers to organize unions and fight for their rights on the job. Both those cynical promises were immediately forgotten when Barack Obama assumed the presidency, and during the two years his party held a thumping majority in the House with a narrower one in the Senate. The administration has never mentioned easing the restrictions on union organizing again, but once in a while, when their poll numbers get low enough, and as long as Republicans are safely in control of the House of Representatives, they dust off their rhetoric on the minimum wage. This is one of those times.

To tell the truth, $10.10 an hour isn’t much, it’s such a low floor that it probably can pass the House if leaders ever allow a floor vote. But it’s far from a wage that will lift people out of poverty.

The elite bipartisan consensus – that’s the president and his spokespeople and Republicans too, agree that the “solution” is not so much raising the wage for what people already DO as “training” which will make them fit for better jobs. But that’s a joke as well. The US economy isn’t producing “better jobs.” Starbucks is full of baristas with M.A. degrees, and most college teachers are now “adjuncts” which means their advanced degrees enable them to work for poverty wages and few or no benefits. PhD incomes have fallen off a cliff the last ten years as colleges and universities re-organize themselves more to resemble the corporations who rule our society.

“…Democrats only take up the cause of the minimum wage when Republicans are in office, to reinforce their fake brand…”

Early in his presidency, Barack Obama proposed recalculating social security benefits to lower them, and late last year he signed off on the reduction of unemployment benefits he now wants immoral Republicans to take all the blame for.

It’s not hard to see that Democrats only take up the cause of the minimum wage when Republicans are in office, to reinforce their fake brand as champions of the oppressed. When they’re in power, and raising that wage is a sure thing, their attention is somewhere else. But once Republicans get the House or the Senate, they talk about “passing a jobs bill”, about “universal pre-K” and about raising the minimum wage, more to embarrass Republicans than with a view to actually accomplishing any of these things.

They are all branding slogans, blatant and shallow hypocrisy, but so far they have worked to reinforce the Democrats’ brand as the party of the oppressed. Find us on the web at www.blackagendareport.com [4].

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and serves on the state committee of the Georgia Green Party. He lives and works in Marietta GA and can be contacted via this site’s contact page [5], or at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20140115_bd_hypocrisy_on_minimum_wage.mp3
Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/content/do-democrats-and-president-obama-really-want-raise-minimum-wage-0