Mea Culpa

David Lindorff in today’s Counterpunch:

Last fall, I and many progressives urged voters to elect Obama, not because we thought he was a progressive, but because we hoped that his background—community organizer, raised by a single mother, experience living in a third world country (Indonesia), multi-racial—would lead him to make at least some right decisions. We, or certainly I, hoped too that the energized young and working class electorate that came out for him in the fall would continue to press him aggressively to do the right thing on war, environment, civil liberties and the economy.

I was wrong on the first count: Obama has been a corporatist through and through on all the major issues that matter. And I was wrong on the second. Most of the left in the US, from the labor movement to the environmentalist movement to the anti-war movement, has to date remained glumly quiescent as Obama has sold them out on each of their key issues.

Read in full

John Pilger: Obama is a corporate marketing creation

Obama’s Ghana speech

Hawking Obama t-shirts in Ghana

In the same fashion that was on display in his Cairo speech, Obama understood how to use words in Ghana that would make him appear as transcending colonialism, almost like the second coming of Franz Fanon.

He alluded to his Kenyan grandfather:

My grandfather was a cook for the British in Kenya, and though he was a respected elder in his village, his employers called him “boy” for much of his life. He was on the periphery of Kenya’s liberation struggles, but he was still imprisoned briefly during repressive times. In his life, colonialism wasn’t simply the creation of unnatural borders or unfair terms of trade — it was something experienced personally, day after day, year after year.

He even had the nerve to invoke Martin Luther King Jr., who regrettably is not alive today to be leading Detroit auto workers in protest against the vicious onslaught organized by America’s first Black president:

Fifty-two years ago, the eyes of the world were on Ghana. And a young preacher named Martin Luther King traveled here, to Accra, to watch the Union Jack come down and the Ghanaian flag go up. This was before the march on Washington or the success of the civil rights movement in my country. Dr. King was asked how he felt while watching the birth of a nation. And he said: “It renews my conviction in the ultimate triumph of justice.”

Obama’s knack for using such phraseology was what of course helped him sucker the Nation Magazine and the housebroken 60s radical left into backing his presidential bid. That is why in a sense it was a waste of time for Hugo Chavéz to present Obama with a Galeano book. He had probably read it and books like it as a young man in order to mine them for the telling phrase that could be used before a left-leaning audience. If any good came out of the Chavéz gift, it was putting Monthly Review books in the black for a year.

Once you penetrate through the verbiage, however, you discover that Obama’s recommendations for Africa are practically the same as those offered in books like Robert Guest’s “A Shackled Continent” or Dambisa Moyo’s “Dead Aid”. Such books attribute Africa’s “backwardness” to internal failings of leadership. A lack of democracy and endemic corruption hold Africa back, not imperialism. Here’s how Obama puts it:

In many places, the hope of my father’s generation gave way to cynicism, even despair. Now, it’s easy to point fingers and to pin the blame of these problems on others. Yes, a colonial map that made little sense helped to breed conflict. The West has often approached Africa as a patron or a source of resources rather than a partner. But the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants. In my father’s life, it was partly tribalism and patronage and nepotism in an independent Kenya that for a long stretch derailed his career, and we know that this kind of corruption is still a daily fact of life for far too many.

It was exceedingly clever for Obama to bring up the case of Zimbabwe since it cannot be denied that Mugabe has been responsible for much of the country’s ruin but the lion’s share of the responsibility falls on Great Britain that has punished the people of Zimbabwe for Mugabe’s sins. More to the point, Mugabe brought down the wrath of Great Britain for moving against the white agrarian gentry more than anything else. Crying crocodile tears over Mugabe’s repression, Great Britain found it easy to ignore far worse offenses to democracy in Nigeria where British-owned oil companies like Shell conspired with the generals to kill Ken Saro-Wiwa. If the generals threw out Shell, you can bet that sanctions of the most extreme sort would be imposed on Nigeria.

The reference to Kenya ignores the main cause of poverty there and that is the role of the country as an exporter of agricultural commodities to the Western marketplace like tea, coffee and cotton. Even if corruption were cleaned up tomorrow, the country would still be miserable. If Obama was truly concerned about Kenyan poverty, the first thing he would do is abolish the IMF and World Bank. Pambazuka News reported:

Kenya’s health care crisis has been 20 years in the making. Its dimensions are spelled out in the 2004 Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) – a government document written in consultation with the IMF and World Bank and approved by both bodies’ boards. Life expectancy declined from 57 in 1986 to 47 in 2000; infant mortality increased from 62 per thousand in 1993 to 78 per thousand in 2003; and under-five mortality rose from 96 per thousand births to 114 per thousand in the same period. The percentage of children with stunted growth increased from 29% in 1993 to 31% in 2003, and the percentage of Kenya’s children who are fully-vaccinated dropped from 79% in 1993 to 52% in 2003.

Why this deterioration? As in most African countries, Kenya’s health care system was hit hard by the “structural adjustment” policies imposed by the IMF and World Bank as conditions on loans and as prerequisites for getting IFI approval of the country’s economic policies. Those policies were introduced in the 1980s, and have left a lasting mark on Kenya’s health. As usual with such programs, the emphasis was on cutting budget expenditures. As a result, local health clinics and dispensaries had fewer supplies and medicines, and user fees became more common. The public hospitals saw their standard of care deteriorate, increasing pressure on the largest public facility, Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi. As a consequence, that hospital, once the leading health facility in East Africa, began, like so many other African hospitals, to ask patients’ families to provide outside food, medicine, and medical supplies. Most beds at Kenyatta and the regional and local hospitals accommodated two patients. Professional staff have taken jobs – some part-time, some full-time, at private healthcare facilities, or migrated to Europe or North America in search of better pay.

Given Obama’s willingness to “play ball” with Republicans in the U.S. over health care, including the ditching of a “public option”, one doubts that he would shed a tear over the disasters taking place in Kenya. After all, if the IMF and World Bank cannot rely on prompt debt repayment, the whole system might collapse taking American investors and their Kenyan stooges down the toilet with them.

This week Obama asked for an additional $108 billion for the IMF, all in the name of rescuing the world economy. It goes without saying that the same criterion being applied inside American borders is being applied overseas. Rescue the banks and hospitals and schools be damned.

As opposed to basket cases like Zimbabwe and Kenya, Obama sees great signs of hope in a democratic and increasingly prosperous Ghana:

Now, we know that’s also not the whole story. Here in Ghana, you show us a face of Africa that is too often overlooked by a world that sees only tragedy or a need for charity. The people of Ghana have worked hard to put democracy on a firmer footing, with repeated peaceful transfers of power even in the wake of closely contested elections. And by the way, can I say that for that the minority deserves as much credit as the majority. And with improved governance and an emerging civil society, Ghana’s economy has shown impressive rates of growth.

Perhaps Obama got all worked up over Ghana after reading an April 24, 2001 Tom Friedman article titled “Protesting for Whom?” that scolded anti-globalization activists and that claimed that Africans favored globalization—the more the better. He cited Ghana as an example of the kind of success free capitalist trade offers:

Ghana, like so many African countries, has largely lived off aid and the export of raw materials. But for the first time it is developing an information sector to do data processing for American Express and Aetna, which is providing jobs that pay much higher than average Ghanaian salaries. “People here want into the global marketplace; they know it’s the only way out of poverty,” says George Apenteng, director of Ghana’s Institute for Economic Affairs. “But people here are also worried they won’t be able to compete and that [Western] markets aren’t as open to what we can sell, like agriculture, as ours are to what they sell.”

If Ghana is the best that Africa can do, then this continent’s version of “Slumdog Millionaire” would be a lot grimmer than anything seen in the movie based in a Mumbai call center. A recent UNICEF report noted:

With more than two decades of progressive, peaceful and democratic political stability, as well as a robust and growing economy, Ghana has emerged as a leader in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Yet, despite Ghana’s relative prosperity, poverty remains pervasive in the country’s three northern regions, which now account for half of Ghana’s population living under the poverty line.  This situation was exacerbated by a recent energy crisis coupled with a humanitarian emergency caused by a combination of severe rains and overflowing rivers.

One third of rural populations lack access to safe drinking water, and only 11 per cent have adequate sanitation. Guinea worm, a parasitic infection largely attributable to drinking unsafe water, continues to plague Ghana which reported more cases of Guinea worm than any other country in 2004.

While parroting the Obama/Friedman line about Ghana’s “success story”, the July 11^th Toronto Globe and Mail issued these warnings:

Despite its progress, Ghana is still ranked only 142 of the 179 countries in the UN human development index, which measures quality of life. Some Ghanaians are so poor that they turn to desperate measures. Just last week, when a Ghana International Airlines plane landed at Gatwick Airport near London, the undercarriage contained the dead body of a man who had apparently risked his life to flee the country. He perished at high altitude.

Ghana has been fortunate that its major export commodities, gold and cocoa, have been immune to the global financial crisis. But many people are excluded from this export-driven growth. Inflation is high, and Ghana’s currency has plunged in the past year.

“It looked like Ghana had turned the corner, but it’s a fragile model,” says Yao Graham, co-ordinator of Third World Network-Africa, a research and advocacy group in Ghana. “Many enterprises have collapsed, and there are loads of young people who can’t get a job, while the rich are living in compounds with barbed wire and guard dogs.”

How odd that Obama can hold up Ghana as a symbol of success when it ranks 142 in the UN HDI index. By comparison, Cuba ranks 51^st and is grouped with the highest tier of industrial nations. (Iceland was number one in the world until it fell off the map during the financial crisis, an argument against integration in the world capitalist economy if there ever was one.) Cuba achieved this rank despite having no access to the IMF or World Bank (or because of). It was also forced to spend a disproportionate share of its national income on defense, a function of being under the gun of Uncle Sam. It was also still recovering from the loss of its main trading partner, the USSR.

It is understandable why Obama would be reluctant to allow Americans to visit Cuba. Some might come back with an unaccountable admiration for a planned economy that places its emphasis on human need rather than private profit. This might lead them to question a government that subsidizes the IMF with an extra $108 billion and forks over $533 billion to the Pentagon, not to speak of the entire miserable system that Obama goes around the world huckstering for.

Democrats are the new Republicans

Bill Maher on Obama

Obama and the Iranian elections

Favored by American elites

Last night NBC Dateline devoted an hour to an extraordinary tour of Iran by Ann Curry that can be viewed online at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/31156080#31156080.

Wearing a hijab, she spoke to dissidents and supporters of the government alike. The most important aspect of the production was its willingness to combat stereotypes of Iran, including most importantly the idea that it is anti-Semitic or holocaust-denying. She spent a considerable amount of time talking to one of Iran’s most important Jewish leaders who denied that his people were being persecuted. During a fairly lengthy interview, former Iranian President Khatami took pains to distinguish this point of view from that of President Ahmadinejad whose views on the Judeocide were described as those of a “private citizen”. Little doubt was left during the course of this program that NBC favored the election of Ahmadinejad’s rival Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a member of Khatami’s party.

The Dateline show follows in the footsteps of a series of articles written by NY Times op ed contributor Roger Cohen, who has written things like this:

For all the morality police inspecting whether women are wearing boots outside their pants (the latest no-no on the dress front) and the regime zealots of the Basiji militia, the air you breathe in Iran is not suffocating. Its streets at dusk hum with life – not a monochrome male-only form of it, or one inhabited by fear – but the vibrancy of a changing, highly-educated society.

This is the Iran of subtle shades that the country’s Jews inhabit. Life is more difficult for them than for Muslims, but to suggest they inhabit a totalitarian hell is self-serving nonsense.

One Iranian exile, no lover of the Islamic Republic, wrote to me saying that my account of Iran’s Jews had brought “tears to my eyes” because “you are saying what many of us would like to hear.”

For his part, Obama has demonstrated an ability to get past the mouth-breathing “rogue state” language of the Dubya years:

The third source of tension is our shared interest in the rights and responsibilities of nations on nuclear weapons.

This issue has been a source of tension between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country, and there is indeed a tumultuous history between us. In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically-elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians. This history is well known. Rather than remain trapped in the past, I have made it clear to Iran’s leaders and people that my country is prepared to move forward. The question, now, is not what Iran is against, but rather what future it wants to build.

Obama’s statement that the U.S. played a role in overthrowing Mossadegh is a striking departure from the Washington foreign policy consensus. On Chris Matthews’s Hardball talk show, there was a clear understanding that Obama’s speech was calculated to entice Iranian voters to reject Ahmadinejad as this exchange between the host and ultrarightist Pat Buchanan would indicate:

OBAMA: None of us should tolerate these extremists. They have killed in many countries. They have killed people of different faiths, but more than any other, they have killed Muslims. Their actions are irreconcilable with the rights of human beings, the progress of nations, and with Islam. The holy Koran teaching that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind.

MATTHEWS: There he is, Pat, pretty blunt.

BUCHANAN: He`s saying, We are embracing Islam, but it is not an embrace that includes this element of Islam, and that these we cut out. They`re outside, but we want to embrace the rest of you. I think it`s a necessary presupposition to what he was going to say. Once we get those outside the equation with you, we can work.

And Chris, he was forthcoming on Iran. He said — virtually said, they can maintain their peaceful nuclear program if they demonstrate to us that they are not moving to nuclear — clandestine nuclear weapons. If this fellow Mousavi wins on June 12th, which he could, over Ahmadinejad, I think you`ll see an entente of sorts…

MATTHEWS: Yes.

BUCHANAN: … between the United States and Iran…

MATTHEWS: Well, that would be — that would be a bell ringer for this speech, if this president of ours had in some way helped win…

BUCHANAN: I think he has done that…

MATTHEWS: … the battle against Ahmadinejad in Iran.

BUCHANAN: He`s done that by pulling back and saying, We believe you are entitled to peaceful nuclear power. But not pushing hard on him, he didn`t help Ahmadinejad.

MATTHEWS: Well, I think he allowed them to get some national prestige out of having a nuclear capability by saying, But you`re not going to get the weapons.

BUCHANAN: That`s their right.

A détente with Iran would make perfect sense from a foreign policy realist perspective. It would use its influence to the West on Iraq in order to keep a Shi’ite government from becoming too unruly. It would also use its influence in Afghanistan to isolate and punish the Taliban as the Boston Globe reported on December 31, 2001:

The United States was desperately short of on-the-ground intelligence in Afghanistan. So, in addition to Pakistan, the United States turned to an unlikely partner, Iran. For many years, Iran had been an archenemy of the United States, having taken American embassy workers hostage two decades ago and encouraged anti-American sentiment. But the relationship had improved slightly in recent years, and Iran had long supported the Northern Alliance.

Iranian intelligence, supplied to the United States through third parties such as the Northern Alliance, included information about how many Pakistanis were crossing the border to join the Taliban and the frequency of airplane flights filled with Arab fighters landing in Kabul.

“This was clearly a case where Iranians had an interest in Afghanistan,” said Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA’s former counterterrorism chief. “They hated the Taliban. We got information from the Iranians. They did it very quietly.”

Given the eventual winding down of U.S. military presence in Iraq to the point where it will be restricted to the powerful bases currently under construction, it will be more necessary than ever to rely on an Iraqi army under Shi’ite control. Given the close ties between Iraqi and Iranian Shi’ites, there would obviously be some concern in Washington that it might have to contend with a major radical nationalist bloc that would collaborate with Venezuela in making OPEC less obedient to imperialist demands.

There are also worries over Iran’s influence in Lebanon and Gaza, where Hezbollah and Hamas remain staunchly anti-Zionist. If the goal is to neutralize Palestinian radicalism, then perhaps it makes more sense to offer a deal to Iran rather than to confront it at every turn.

The reformist party in Iran appears to be more than willing to adopt a more “sensible” foreign policy in exchange with a relaxation of tensions with the U.S., including an end to sanctions.

Today the N.Y. Times reported on the supposedly unprecedented free-wheeling character of the Iranian elections:

The leading candidates are accusing each other of corruption, bribery and torture. The wife of the strongest challenger to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has threatened to sue him for defaming her. And every night, parts of the capital become a screaming, honking bacchanal, with thousands of young men dancing and brawling in the streets until dawn.

The presidential campaign, now in its final week, has reached a level of passion and acrimony almost unheard-of in Iran.

In part, that appears to be because of a surge of energy in the campaign of Mir Hussein Moussavi, a reformist who is the leading contender to defeat Mr. Ahmadinejad in the election, set for Friday. Rallies for Mr. Moussavi have drawn tens of thousands of people in recent days, and a new unofficial poll suggests his support has markedly increased, with 54 percent of respondents saying they would vote for him compared with 39 percent for Mr. Ahmadinejad.

But many Iranians say the campaign’s raucous tone is due largely to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s unexpectedly fierce rhetorical attacks, which have infuriated his rivals and their supporters, and drawn some blistering ripostes.

“This campaign is a watershed in the history of Iran,” Sadegh Zibakalam, a political analyst at Tehran University, said. “We’ve had debates before, but nothing like this. Ahmadinejad is accusing everybody of corruption — he is basically saying the same thing the counterrevolutionaries have been saying all along.”

With respect to “the wife of the strongest challenger to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad” threatening to sue him for defamation, you can see the origin of this dispute in the debate between the two candidates that is accompanied by an English-translation at: http://irannegah.com/Video.aspx?id=1214. I would urge you to listen to the entire debate, but for those who have an aversion to mud-slinging, you can go straight to the 70 minute point and see Ahmadinejad hold up a dossier on Moussavi’s wife. Apparently she entered a graduate program without taking the entrance exam and was implicated in other petty violations of university policy. From what I see in the higher education trade journals on a daily basis, Mrs. Moussavi was a minor offender by comparison:

Louisville Says Doctorate Earned in Semester Is Legit

The University of Louisville has concluded that a much-questioned doctorate it awarded — for one semester of study — was legitimate, The Louisville Courier-Journal reported. The doctorate was awarded to John Deasy in 2004 — and appears to violate university rules about residency requirements. Deasy, as a school superintendent, had given money to a research center headed by the then-dean of Louisville’s education college, who then went on to chair Deasy’s dissertation committee, leading to questions about the legitimacy of the degree. But the university found that the “totality of the circumstances” indicated an appropriate process. At the same time, Louisville announced that it is tightening the procedures about exemptions from normal procedures for doctorates. The former dean, Robert Felner, was for years popular with administrators even as he angered many professors. In October, he was indicted on 10 counts of mail fraud, money-laundering and income-tax evasion related to charges that he fraudulently obtained grants for Louisville and the University of Rhode Island. He has denied wrongdoing.

Despite the ferocity of the campaign rhetoric, it would be misleading to consider the Iranian election as democratic. In a real sense, the differences between the two candidates take place within the context of the Shi’ite permanent government. The Guardian Council is an unelected body that sits above parliament and chooses who can run in the elections. Ruled by Ali Khamenei, it is totally unaccountable to the Iranian people who must choose between a “conservative” like Ahmadinejad who promotes a relatively anti-imperialist foreign policy and a “reformist” like Moussavi who would certainly be more amenable to American interests in the region.

For the most astute analysis of the Iranian version of our own staged elections, I recommend Reza Fiyouzat’s “The Spectacle of the Iranian Elections”  that appears in today’s edition of Counterpunch. Fiyouzat, who blogs at http://revolutionaryflowerpot.blogspot.com/, has the temerity to reject both politicians:

Searching for and finding similar instances of political brand making committed in wildly different settings and situations can be instructive. Followers of things Iranian may have noticed a couple of parallels between the campaigns of Iranian presidential candidates for the June 12 elections and those of the U.S. presidential elections past.

Most definitely, these are superficial likenesses, but they could also point to deeper parallels. For one, both political systems protect and prolong the rule of an absolute minority. Another deep similarity is that in both political setups, exclusively for the participation of the ruling elites (no matter how many factions they come in), a certain level of ‘democracy’ (meaning here, tolerance) is institutionally allowed/required.

Now to the superficial similarities. In these presidential elections, Iranians have a  ‘candidate of change’ (yes, literally the same slogan) in the person of Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Now, this is very interesting, since Mir-Hossein Mousavi, currently a member of the ‘reformist’ camp, was the prime minister (when the post existed) from 1981 to 1989. Back then he was a member of the ‘left wing’ due to his advocacy for a state-run economy. Nowadays, he has changed indeed and supports all manner of privatization (as do all ‘reformers’).

Mousavi’s premiership coincided with the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), during which his economic management carried the country through very rough times. Among other innovations, he introduced the coupon system that made sure everybody received the minimum ration of needed nutrients during those hard times.

He was also deeply involved in the arms-for-hostages deals with the Reagan administrations in the1980s, and was close to Manuchehr Ghorbanifar, one of the central figures in the arms-for-hostages deals.

Ahmadinejad does not come off much better:

Another trend that has traveled well across the oceans is the ‘Anybody But’ phenomenon. This year, it finally reached our shores, and we now have the much awaited, ‘Anybody but Ahmadinejad!’ In many ways, he is Iran’s George W. Bush. Just as much as Bush was hated by all but the most dedicated American right-wingers, Ahmadinejad is hated by all but the most dedicated Iranian right-wingers (the Basiji’s and the Revolutionary Guards).

And just like George Bush Jr., Ahmadinejad is un-liked so thoroughly that he has split the Iranian conservatives. There are as many (if not more) conservatives against him as there are for him; hence, the decision by another conservative, Mohsen Rezaee, a former Revolutionary Guards chief commander, to run for the presidency in these elections. Some other bigwig conservatives who have chosen to distance themselves from Ahmadinejad include: Ali Larijani (former chief nuclear negotiator), Mohammad Reza Bahonar (first deputy speaker of Majles), and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (current Tehran mayor).

Indeed, Ahmadinejad is so not-liked by some conservatives, that he has driven some to the ‘reformist’ camp, presumably to assure Ahmadinejad’s ouster. According to reports, “some major figures in the conservative/principlist camp, led by Mr. Emad Afrough, the Tehran deputy to the 7th Majles (the parliament), announced the formation of a committee in support of Mr. Mousavi,” (The Hard-Liners in a Panic; ).

In short, just like Bush Jr., Ahmadinejad is too much of a divider, does not play well with others, is an anti-unifier of first degree, and that has become a source of deep worry in the Iranian elite establishment.

In 1968, just a year after I joined the Socialist Workers Party, we launched a highly ambitious election campaign with Fred Halstead and Paul Boutelle running for president and vice-president. Time after time, Fred and Paul reminded their audiences that whoever won the election that year, the American people will be the losers. You can say the same thing about the Iranian elections. If Moussavi wins, the elites will push to privatize industry and slash social spending while at the same time making it easier for women and students to enjoy personal expression. If Ahmadinejad wins, there will be a bit more resistance to Obama’s plans to reestablish American imperialism as an unchallenged hegemonic power in the Middle East and Asia.

If I were running a propaganda campaign as an Iranian version of Halstead and Boutelle, I’d support resistance to anti-working class austerity programs, solidarity with Venezuela and other nations standing up to American imperialism, and the right of citizens to express themselves culturally, politically and spiritually without interference from the state and the clerics. In Iran, such a campaign would likely be crushed because of its potential for support in an increasingly restive society polarized around class and entitlement. For the time being such campaigns are tolerated in the U.S. but in years to come, as the financial crisis drags on, we might have to operate under increasingly restrictive circumstances as the Democrats and Republicans try to keep dissent bottled up in the two party system. Courage and dedication will be required, but the possibilities for thorough-going social and political change will motivate us to face whatever difficulties stand in our path.

Obama and mountaintop removal

Although I have become somewhat inured to Barack Obama’s continuation of the second Bush term, I felt an almost virginal sense of being violated by his latest thumb in the eye of the Democratic Party base. I am speaking of his giving the green light to 42 more mountaintop removal permits, thus proving his fealty to arguably the most viciously anti-environmental sector of American private enterprise.

So disgusting was this action that even Daily Kos, which tends to grovel at Obama’s feet, was forced to take notice. Dgil, a Kos contributor, directed his or her readers to a Los Angeles Times article that broke the story:

With the election of President Obama, environmentalists had expected to see the end of the “Appalachian apocalypse,” their name for exposing coal deposits by blowing the tops off whole mountains.

But in recent weeks, the administration has quietly made a decision to open the way for at least two dozen more mountaintop removals.

In a letter this month to a coal ally, Rep. Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va.), the Environmental Protection Agency said it would not block dozens of “surface mining” projects. The list included some controversial mountaintop mines.

Dgil added his own two cents at the end of the post:

So why has the current administration quietly moved forward with a huge expansion of an ecologically destructive mining process? The end result is expansion of an energy source campaigned against, and whose additional mined energy output can be created in ways with little (wind) or no (hydro) additional environmental impact.

The gist of the LAT article is that this decision was made for the crassest of reasons-political expediency to get votes. Additionally, why would an administration that has positioned itself as determined to move forward on trimming atmospheric carbon emissions, purposefully expand the production of highly polluting coal? What benefit will this actually bring the residents of this area? More health problems? A devastated ecology? Destroyed recreational opportunities?

With all due respect (well, maybe half respect) to Markos Moulitsas and company, the real goal is not to get votes. Instead, this decision would have been made even if it cost votes. Obama’s calculation was, is it has always been, to act on behalf of the interests of the bourgeoisie, if I might put it in such crass, unrepentant terms. It goes along with putting a shiv in the back of UAW workers, bombing civilians in Afghanistan, catering to Goldman-Sachs and all the rest. It is called capitalist politics and acts independently of the wishes of the gullible voter. Indeed, despite EPA director Carole Browner’s reputation in liberal circles as being a committed environmentalist, I found her record questionable but I suppose that is what recommended her to Obama.

As a long time environmentalist, converted to the cause after hearing Joel Kovel liken capitalist growth to a metastasizing tumor, there are two issues which grab my attention more than any other. One is overfishing and water pollution, a function no doubt of my love for the lakes and streams of upstate New York growing up. The other is mountaintop removal, a crime that has stirred me from afar. Although I have never been to Appalachia, I cannot help becoming outraged by what strip mining does to people and nature alike. It represents the fanged, merciless and total victory of profits over human need.

I was introduced to mountaintop removal in an article that appeared in the April 2005 Harpers Magazine, a publication that I have been subscribed to for about 30 years. Written by Erik Reece and titled “Death of a Mountain: Radical strip mining and the leveling of Appalachia”, it is one of the most powerful environmentalist critiques I have ever read. (Reece’s expanded his article into a book in 2006 titled “Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness”.)

Since Harpers (regrettably) makes very few articles available to non-subscribers, we are fortunate to be able to read it at http://www.wesjones.com/death.htm. Reece writes about one activist who symbolizes the kind of working class resistance that is on the front lines against polluting corporations across the entire country. Her name is Teri Blanton and she is definitely not the chardonnay drinking, Arugula munching type:

Coal operators are not an easily intimidated bunch. But there is probably no one in the state of Kentucky who rattles their cage like a forty-eight-year-old grandmother named Teri Blanton. A former chairperson of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, the state’s largest social-justice organization, Blanton has spent the last two decades helping coalfield residents fight the corporations that have turned so much of eastern Kentucky into what she calls a toxic dump.

One can get a real education in environmental corruption and smash-mouth class warfare by tracking the last twenty years of Blanton’s life. She grew up in a small town called Dayhoit, in Harlan County, where four generations of her family had lived along White Star Hollow. It was the kind of community where neighbors shared their coal in the winter, and on a rare piece of flatland, one man, Millard Sutton, grew enough vegetables to feed nearly everyone in town. Families took turns helping out in his garden. Blanton moved to Michigan in the seventies to start a family, then moved back to Dayhoit in 1981 as a single mother of two. Her career as an activist started shortly afterward, when she phoned the highway department and asked for someone to clean up the large puddle of black water and coal sludge that stood in front of her trailer where her children caught the school bus. The highway department called the coal company that was mining around White Star Hollow, and the company responded by sending a coal truck to slowly circle Blanton’s trailer all day. “That really burnt my ass,” Blanton recalled, “that they thought they could shut me up by intimidation.” That coal company, owned by two brothers, James and Aubra Dean, never did clean up the mess, and in the end, after Blanton’s relentless badgering, the highway department built a new road up to her trailer.

Blanton would seem to have much in common with Maria Gunnoe, another female, working-class activist from the region who is featured in the documentary “Burning the Future” that I reviewed in February 2008 and whose Youtube trailer is linked to at the top of this article. In the review, I take note of the kind of resistance that is sweeping the coal region and that has taken to the streets once again to protest Obama’s sell-out:

Remarkable enough as a muckraking indictment of the coal industry, the movie is also a real breakthrough by showing the capacity of ordinary Americans, most of whom conform to the “Red State” stereotype of country music, NASCAR races, hunting and the Baptist church, to resist the onslaught that has turned their water wells into receptacles of filthy, toxic strip-mining run-off. The documentary, directed by David Novack, is a reminder that political activism is nearly never the result of preaching from above but the experience of daily life under a social, economic, or–in this instance–an environmental crisis. When your children suffer one health emergency after another, it is of no use to tell the parents that this is balanced by “economic progress” in their home state.

Sadly enough, the UMW has endorsed Obama’s mountaintop removal permits, despite the fact that it is a threat to their health and to the natural beauty of the region. Jeff Biggers, a journalist and author of “The United States of Appalachia” was interviewed on Democracy Now on May 29^th and spoke about the sad state of the coal miner’s union:

JUAN GONZALEZ: How has the American labor movement dealt with this issue? Clearly, obviously, at least for the mine workers and others, this has meant a loss of jobs. But have they taken a firm stand with their political leaders around this?

JEFF BIGGERS: You know, the United Mine Workers—and I should say, you know, I’m a grandson of a coal miner, and my granddaddy was a union coal miner. He suffered with black lung. And I appreciate the work of the United Mine Workers. They’re the people who gave us our eight-hour workday. You know, we struggled for a hundred years to have a great union movement.

But that movement has been broken really since the 1980s. In West Virginia, in particular, they’re still struggling just to survive. And what I don’t understand is, instead of looking at the ramifications of mountaintop removal that has taken their jobs, that has absolutely plundered the industry and led to skyrocketing poverty rates, the United Mine Workers are hanging onto the scraps, and they’re supporting mountaintop removal in West Virginia. Think about this. There are less than a thousand jobs for the United Mine Workers in mountaintop removal. Less than a thousand jobs. You know, they’re really trying to hang onto the last crumbs of this industry, as opposed to saying, “Let’s come up with another form of underground mining, or let’s actually—let’s shift into some sort of clean energy that we can relocate and we can reeducate and retrain our miners to do.”

One is of course struck by how much another once-powerful union has departed from its militant roots, namely the UAW which has seen its pay and benefits stripped as part of a deal to rescue GM. Perhaps all this is inevitable. Maybe we have to turn back the clock to the early 1930s when industrial union did not exist in the U.S. With the UAW and the UMW functioning like the class-collaborationist craft unions that Samuel Gompers led, a vacuum will open up for a new trade union movement that is committed to the revolutionary ideals that many rank-and-file activists of the 1930s shared. This time, however, we should keep our eyes on the prize and not be tempted to settle for half-measures that leave capitalism intact, as was FDR’s aim. Of course, given Obama’s tendency to operate like Herbert Hoover, the task of educating the left will be a bit less difficult than it was in the 1930s.

The difference between Bush and Obama

by Carlos Latuff, a Brazilian cartoonist.

(Hat tip to http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine)

Doing nothing

Rendition Lite

Harper Magazine’s Scott Horton: relieved that Obama is restoring Bush 41’s rendition policies

On February first, the Los Angeles Times reported that renditions will continue under the Obama administration:

The CIA’s secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.

Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.

Not long after the article appeared, it was discredited as a hoax by Obama supporters Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings and Harper’s Magazine Scott Horton, an expert on extralegal abuses during the Bush administration, who wrote:

The Los Angeles Times just got punked… It misses the difference between the renditions program, which has been around since the Bush 41 Administration at least (and arguably in some form even in the Reagan Administration) and the extraordinary renditions program which was introduced by Bush 43 and clearly shut down under an executive order issued by President Obama in his first week.

There are two fundamental distinctions between the programs. The extraordinary renditions program involved the operation of long-term detention facilities either by the CIA or by a cooperating host government together with the CIA, in which prisoners were held outside of the criminal justice system and otherwise unaccountable under law for extended periods of time. A central feature of this program was rendition to torture, namely that the prisoner was turned over to cooperating foreign governments with the full understanding that those governments would apply techniques that even the Bush Administration considers to be torture. This practice is a felony under current U.S. law, but was made a centerpiece of Bush counterterrorism policy.

The earlier renditions program regularly involved snatching and removing targets for purposes of bringing them to justice by delivering them to a criminal justice system. It did not involve the operation of long-term detention facilities and it did not involve torture. There are legal and policy issues with the renditions program, but they are not in the same league as those surrounding extraordinary rendition. Moreover, Obama committed to shut down the extraordinary renditions program, and continuously made clear that this did not apply to the renditions program.

Horton’s reassurances to the contrary, I for one would not use Bush 41’s renditions program as a benchmark for human rights. He states that the earlier program “regularly involved snatching and removing targets for purposes of bringing them to justice by delivering them to a criminal justice system.” Is that what Obama’s election was about? Restoring the values of the Bush and Clinton administrations? Well, actually…

Barack Obama promised that his foreign policy would be a return to what he says was the realist approach practiced by George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.

“My foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional realistic policy of George Bush’s father, of John F. Kennedy, of in some ways Ronald Reagan,” he said Friday.  A voter at the town hall in Greenburg had asked Obama to respond to charges that his foreign policy was naïve.

“It is George Bush who has been naïve and it’s people like John McCain and unfortunately some democrats that have facilitated him acting in these naïve ways that have caused us so much damage in our reputation in the world,” Obama said.

Drawing on the example of the first Gulf War, Obama said that the first President Bush had “conducted a Gulf War with allies that ended up costing twenty billion dollars and left us stronger because they were realistic.”

In an interview with the Washington Post on November 4, 1989, George H.W. Bush’s CIA director William H. Webster explained what “rendition” would amount to:

The administration hopes to locate, seize and bring back to the United States for trial the terrorists responsible for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on Dec. 21 that caused the deaths of all 259 people aboard and 11 others in Lockerbie, Scotland, where it crashed.

Anticipating the possibility of such action, the Justice Department, he said, has created a new term, “rendition,” to describe the act of capturing and bringing back to the United States a criminal suspect. Webster confirmed that the United States believes it has the legal basis for kidnapping a terrorist in another country even without the knowledge and permission of its government.

So what we have here is Scott Horton trying to reassure fellow liberals that Obama is merely restoring the norms of Bush the elder, even if it meant that the CIA would be able to kidnap “a terrorist in another country even without the knowledge and permission of its government”. Far be it for me to resist the blandishments of the pro-Obama left, but I fail to see much difference between Bush the father and Bush the son. Indeed, if the father had been president when the WTC and Pentagon were attacked, you can assume that the CIA would be kidnapping “terrorists” left and right, even if it couldn’t prove that its captives ever did anything wrong.

UPDATE

Apparently Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com shared Scott Horton’s qualms about the LA Times article, which led to some email exchanges between him and the reporter who gave him permission to include the following in his latest column:

The story made clear that Obama intends to administer the rendition program in a very different way. I quote an Obama administration official saying so, language from the executive order saying so, and a human rights advocate saying so. In the first paragraph, I point out that the secret prisons are gone, and torture is banned. This is not a story saying it’s business as usual under Obama.

Nevertheless, the rendition program is controversial. Even if administered in the most enlightened manner, it is a program that involves the use of the CIA in secret abductions and prisoner transfers.

Perhaps Obama will decide that prisoners can only be rendered to U.S. courts. But the executive orders don’t say that. If prisoners are taken to third countries — as they were during the Clinton years, and are likely to be under Obama — safeguarding their well-being is a serious challenge. If that were not the case, there would be no controversy. The CIA has always maintained that it obtains assurances that prisoners will not be tortured.

Obama’s decisions to close Guantanamo Bay and the CIA’s secret prisons were legitimate news stories. His decision to extend the renditions program is too.

The article came from reading Obama’s executive orders and speaking with officials in the Obama administration and the U.S. intelligence community about what they mean.

Greg Miller

UPDATE 2

http://aclu.org/safefree/torture/38662prs20090204.html

Obama Endorses Bush Secrecy On Torture And Rendition (2/4/2009)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

NEW YORK – After the British High Court ruled that evidence of British resident Binyam Mohamed’s extraordinary rendition and torture at Guantánamo Bay must remain secret because of threats made by the Bush administration to halt intelligence sharing, the Obama administration told the BBC today in a written statement: “The United States thanks the UK government for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information and preserve the long-standing intelligence sharing relationship that enables both countries to protect their citizens.”

The following can be attributed to Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union:

“Hope is flickering. The Obama administration’s position is not change. It is more of the same. This represents a complete turn-around and undermining of the restoration of the rule of law. The new American administration shouldn’t be complicit in hiding the abuses of its predecessors.”

When the ACLU learned of the High Court’s ruling earlier today, it sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urging her to clarify the Obama administration’s position relating to the Mohamed case and calling on her to reject the Bush administration’s policy of using false claims of national security to avoid judicial review of controversial programs.

The ACLU’s letter to Secretary of State Clinton is available online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/general/38660leg20090204.html

The British High Court ruling is available online at: www.judiciary.gov.uk/docs/judgments_guidance/mohamed-judgment4-04022009.pdf

UPDATE 3

Michael Ratner debates Scott Horton on whether Obama actually ended renditions.