By Gerry Ruddy
Monday, 24 March 2008
Every Easter since 1916 all over Ireland and in some other parts of the world homage is paid to the men and women of 1916 who on Easter Monday went out to do battle with the then greatest imperialist power in the world. The Easter Rebellion was crushed, the leaders executed, but a spark had been lit that inspired oppressed peoples throughout the world to believe that freedom and independence from Colonialism and imperialism was possible.
Easter 1916 has international significance but unfortunately many of the republicans who gather all over Ireland will not see the international dimension of the 1916 [uprising]. Irish bourgeois nationalists began soon after 1916 to revise the history of 1916.
It became a glorious sacrifice by pure minded Irish nationalists like Padraigh Pearse to redeem the soul of Ireland who by shedding their blood just like Jesus Christ at Calvary reasserted Ireland's manhood and justified the creation of a bourgeois state.
The actual class conditions that motivated the likes of James Connolly and the trade unionists who set up the Irish Citizen's Army to battle capitalism were written out of history. Radical ideas were demonised and the heroes of 1916 elevated into almost saint like status with no politics but a pure love for Ireland and of course totally identified with the Roman Catholic Church. Connolly's Marxism was airbrushed from history. Liam Mellow's call for republicans to appeal to the men and women of no property was demonised as anti-Catholic and communistic. Rome spoke and the people listened! Censorship, piety, poverty, emigration and intellectually sterility became the order of the day from the twenties to the fifties.
During that period those few active republicans in Ireland were generally speaking non-drinking, non-cursing and upholders of Catholic morality. They survived in a stifling environment channelling all their revolutionary energies towards yet another armed uprising or establishing a guerrilla campaign against British interests in Ireland. They had no time for social protest, saw class struggle as alien, and had no understanding of the position of the majority of the Protestant working class. This is not to condemn them for they were in a sense prisoners of history caught in a time warp where intellectual freedom was frowned on, censorship all-controlling and clergy particularly in the partitioned 26 counties almost looked up to as next to God!
But not all conformed. There has always been class-consciousness within republicanism and the story of the role of the left within that fine revolutionary tradition has not yet reached wider layers of the working class.
Only in the late fifties and early sixties did the radical ideas of Connolly and Mellows and the class nature of the struggle for liberation begin to re-surface within Irish Republicanism. That republicanism had gone through many stages since 1916.
It had fought a sustained war of national liberation that ended in partition and the splintering of the Republican forces. It had embraced physical force and the exclusion of any political activity. It had swung to the far left in the thirties and then at the bidding of the bishops rapidly abandoned that left radicalism. It flirted with fascism and Nazism in the late thirties and early 1940's. It began to look to the left when yet another armed campaign, Operation Harvest 56-61, ended in dismal failure with many ex-prisoners demonised, ignored and neglected within areas of Belfast that later became known after 1969 as "republican areas". Older republicans referred to the newcomers as 69'ers.
That swing to the left of course raised issues of policy. The divide between those who argued for a step-by-step approach, first democracy, then national independence and then finally a struggle for socialism, and those who argued for both socialism and independence began. But while that debate was simmering there was also the international explosion of 1968 worldwide when revolution looked to be possible.
Those heady days convinced many that success was just around the corner. Ireland would be united, socialism would reign supreme and the world would be a better place. Yes indeed! The Provos emerged believing that all this talk of socialism was nonsense and was indeed an alien ideology and only direct military action such as bombing the shit out of the 6-counites would yield success. They got it wrong and ended up re-establishing British rule in the north on a firmer basis and without any of that nasty socialism they had so despised in 69/70.
And the left including all the different sections of the republican left? Sadly yet another failure-too introspective, politically sectarian and some were seduced into believing that the rattle of rifles was the sound of revolution. Others believed that they had the way, the truth and the light and so looked down with contempt on others of the left or else launched either verbal or physical murderous assaults on those who failed to share their world-view.
Hopefully all those of a left orientation within the broad family of republicanism will study the barren years from 1916 until 2008 and learn the simple basic lesson that republicanism without socialism is a dead end and that unless and until Left republicans embrace the totality of the international class struggle the prospects of success are nil. Back to Connolly, back to Marx and forward to the liberation of the Irish working class as part of an international victory of the world proletariat.RENEGADE EYE
Monday, March 24, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
The Riots in Tibet
By Heiko Khoo
Tuesday, 18 March 2008
Faced with riots and bloodshed in Tibet, the Chinese government responded by casting the blame on the Dalai Lama and the campaign by Tibetan exiles to raise the Tibet issue internationally, in advance of the Olympic Games. Undoubtedly the Dalai Lama, with his followers and friends, have an interest in using these events to exert political pressure on Beijing in the media spotlight, but that alone cannot explain what is happening in Tibet today.
Tibet Autonomous Region
Chinese reporters at the Xinhua news agency reported the scene in Lhasa:
"Dense smoke blanketed the cloud dotted blue sky, burning wreckages emitted an irritating smell and hundreds wailed over the bloodshed.
"Vandals carrying backpacks filled with stones and bottles of inflammable liquids smashed windows, set fire to vehicles, shops and restaurants along their path."
Friday March 14th in Lhasa is described as
"a day when the capital was left in chaos after an outburst of beating, smashing, looting and burning, which officials say, on ample evidence, was ‘masterminded by the Dalai clique'."
Although the attacks on people and property had no political content, they were sparked off by monks' protests on March 10th. According to the Peoples' Daily 300 monks from Zhaibung Monastery confronted security forces and provoked physical clashes. Onlookers then took up the torch and mobs
"set off on a destruction rampage and spared nothing and nobody on their way. Rioters set fire to buildings, torched dozens of police cars and private vehicles and looted banks, schools and shops. Innocent civilians were stabbed, stoned and scourged. At least 10 died, mostly from burns."
All reports of the violence speak of youths in their 20s being involved in the rampage. A Muslim steamed bun shop owner, who was stabbed, reported that several vandals broke into his shop in the tourist zone. "They came to beat us directly and we didn't dare put up any resistance, only begging," he said, "I know some of them. They were nice people before."
The explanation offered by the national and local Communist Party is hollow, although the spark for the riots and bloodshed was the monks' and the Dalai Lama's campaign; the cause of the riots was something totally different. Tibet has seen an influx of Chinese businesses; the wealth accumulated all over China by the newly rich has opened opportunities for investments large and small. Those who fail to benefit are the Tibetan unemployed and migrant workers from the villages.
In the state sector in Tibet, where employment opportunities are booming, Tibetan nationals are unlikely to get the jobs. They are easily out-skilled by the vast pool of potential recruits from every corner of China, thus fostering nationalist resentment.
The ‘average wage' in China represents the earnings of a specific group of employed people in China, known as 'staff and workers', including layers of public employees from upper-ranking cadres down to workers in public utilities or state-owned factories. It therefore excludes migrant workers or workers in small factories or workplaces.
The ‘average wage' in China's cities as a whole is 14,000 Yuan a year, (US$1800) but wages in Tibet are nearly double the average, higher than in Shanghai and second only to Beijing. State sector employment accounts for nearly 94 percent of employment in Tibet as opposed to 66 percent in China's cities on average.
The problem is that such relatively well-paid state employment is disproportionately allocated to people of ethnic Chinese backgrounds. Higher wages are justified on the basis that living in Tibet takes you far from family and friends and often causes serious health problems due to the effects of high altitude. Tibetans, whose skills are generally lower than the ethnic Chinese migrants, look on them as a deliberately privileged layer.
Alongside the influx of state employees, engaged in administration and infrastructure projects, has come an influx of ethnic Chinese traders and to a lesser extent Hui Muslims, whose businesses thrive on the high spending power of state employees and tourists. Their nationwide networks mean Tibetans can't compete with them. The boom in Tibet has encouraged all manner of migrant entrepreneurs to open shop, including beggars' rackets and sex workers. Tibetans often think they too are subsidized by Beijing. Thus it is easy to see wherein the roots of ethnic discontent lie.
All over China the wage levels of workers have not risen in line with the economic boom. Under pressure from the army of migrant workers and the rapaciousness of private sector employers, wages for many have been frozen. According to the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) 26% of China's workers have not received a pay rise for five years despite the economy growing at an average of 10.6%. Profits have been boosted not only by new machinery and work methods but also by holding down wages. The ratio of overall labour costs to GDP has fallen from 53.4 percent in 1990 to only 41.4 percent in 2005.
Officials in Lhasa and Beijing, claim that the ‘Dalai clique', "organized, premeditated and masterminded" the bloody riots and discontent of young Tibetans. This claim is pure foolishness! It is the growing income and opportunity disparities that foster explosions of discontent, here in an ethnic riot or a labour conflict, there in a peasant revolt. It is almost comical, that with absurd income disparities fuelling the anger of tens of millions, the slogan of "build a harmonious society" should have become the Party mantra.
A genuine Communist, i.e. Marxist, policy would sensitively and harmoniously develop the nation and its minority regions on the basis of a democratically planned economy. Instead of this the leadership of the Communist Party of China pursues a bureaucratic plan to open up Tibet to the market.
The riots are not simply a plot by the ‘Dalai Clique'. Although it is clear that the major Western imperialist powers have an interest in weakening China and will exploit the discontent of the minorities in this vast country. The real, and most direct cause of this conflict is to be found in the policies of pro-capitalist forces in control of the party. This will bear bitter fruit all over the nation. While looking at the burnt out scene in central Lhasa, a Tibetan trader by the name of Rawan told the People's Daily, "It was once a shopping haven, but now it is all deserted, like a hell."
On the road to capitalism disparities of income and investment inevitably stir up regionalism, ethnic and national conflicts, resulting in violence and turmoil. Should Tibet ever successfully break away from China, then, as in the past, it would fall prey to one or other of the imperialist powers, "Tibetan Independence" under capitalism is a pipedream.
A united struggle by the Chinese workers together with the Tibetans and other minority groups against the capitalist transformation of China can lay the basis for a voluntary union of the peoples based on a genuinely democratic plan of production under the control and supervision of the workers and peasants themselves.RENEGADE EYE
Monday, March 17, 2008
World Perspectives: Palestine
This post is a small part of a World Perspectives 2008 document.
In many countries the working class, after years of despondency and exhaustion, is taking the road of struggle. We see this in the impressive strike wave in Egypt, but also in Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon and in Israel itself. It is necessary to place on the agenda the fight for working class policies, for proletarian international solidarity and the struggle for socialism as the only lasting solution for the problems of the masses.
It is essential that the revolutionary youth in Palestine understand this. If we accept the argument that Israeli society is just one reactionary mass, then the cause of the Palestinian people would be lost forever. But it is not true! In Israel there are rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, just as in any other country. It is necessary to work to forge links between the revolutionaries in Palestine and the masses in Israel - Jews as well as Arabs. That is the only way to drive a wedge between the reactionary Zionist ruling class and the masses.
We are told that this is impossible. That is not true! On more than one occasion in the past, there have been clear indications that the message from the occupied territories was getting through to the masses in Israel. At the time of the massacre of Palestinians in Lebanon there was a huge demonstration of protest in Israel and in the first Intifada there were clear indications of discontent in Israel, including in the armed forces.
Tactics like suicide bombings and rocket attacks on civilian targets are wrong because they are counterproductive. For every Israeli citizen that is killed they will kill many more Palestinians. This does not do any damage to the Israeli military machine but it is of extraordinary help to the Israeli ruling class and state. By pushing the masses towards the Zionist state, these tactics strengthen the very thing they intended to destroy.
We fight for socialist revolution throughout the Middle East and in Iran, the Gulf and North Africa. We fight against imperialism - the main enemy of all the peoples. But we also fight against landlordism and capitalism - the main agents of imperialism. We are opposed to religious fundamentalism, which attempts to divert the healthy anti-imperialist instincts of the masses into the blind alley of religious fanaticism and reactionary obscurantism. We stand for workers' power and socialism and a new social order that expresses the interests of the masses. We are for the creation of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East, where Jews and Arabs can be guaranteed a homeland in Autonomous Socialist Republics. That is the only real way forward!
No solution to the Palestinian question is possible on the basis of wheeling and dealing with imperialism. The only possible solution is to divide Israel along class lines: to break the stranglehold of reactionary Zionism. But this demands a class position. It is difficult to put forward this position in the given circumstances, but events will provide the Marxists with openings as the masses come to realize the futility of the old methods. In the meanwhile it is necessary to patiently explain our ideas to the most advanced elements. In future our ideas will find a mass echo.
RENEGADE EYE
In many countries the working class, after years of despondency and exhaustion, is taking the road of struggle. We see this in the impressive strike wave in Egypt, but also in Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon and in Israel itself. It is necessary to place on the agenda the fight for working class policies, for proletarian international solidarity and the struggle for socialism as the only lasting solution for the problems of the masses.
It is essential that the revolutionary youth in Palestine understand this. If we accept the argument that Israeli society is just one reactionary mass, then the cause of the Palestinian people would be lost forever. But it is not true! In Israel there are rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, just as in any other country. It is necessary to work to forge links between the revolutionaries in Palestine and the masses in Israel - Jews as well as Arabs. That is the only way to drive a wedge between the reactionary Zionist ruling class and the masses.
We are told that this is impossible. That is not true! On more than one occasion in the past, there have been clear indications that the message from the occupied territories was getting through to the masses in Israel. At the time of the massacre of Palestinians in Lebanon there was a huge demonstration of protest in Israel and in the first Intifada there were clear indications of discontent in Israel, including in the armed forces.
Tactics like suicide bombings and rocket attacks on civilian targets are wrong because they are counterproductive. For every Israeli citizen that is killed they will kill many more Palestinians. This does not do any damage to the Israeli military machine but it is of extraordinary help to the Israeli ruling class and state. By pushing the masses towards the Zionist state, these tactics strengthen the very thing they intended to destroy.
We fight for socialist revolution throughout the Middle East and in Iran, the Gulf and North Africa. We fight against imperialism - the main enemy of all the peoples. But we also fight against landlordism and capitalism - the main agents of imperialism. We are opposed to religious fundamentalism, which attempts to divert the healthy anti-imperialist instincts of the masses into the blind alley of religious fanaticism and reactionary obscurantism. We stand for workers' power and socialism and a new social order that expresses the interests of the masses. We are for the creation of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East, where Jews and Arabs can be guaranteed a homeland in Autonomous Socialist Republics. That is the only real way forward!
No solution to the Palestinian question is possible on the basis of wheeling and dealing with imperialism. The only possible solution is to divide Israel along class lines: to break the stranglehold of reactionary Zionism. But this demands a class position. It is difficult to put forward this position in the given circumstances, but events will provide the Marxists with openings as the masses come to realize the futility of the old methods. In the meanwhile it is necessary to patiently explain our ideas to the most advanced elements. In future our ideas will find a mass echo.
RENEGADE EYE
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Blogs and Food Part I
There is no interest in my sardine tacos, or my use of coffee as a spice. I asked several bloggers, to send me recipes; preferably easy to prepare, common ingredients, ethnic etc. In addition if I print the recipe, I'll plug your blog. Send recipes to me at the email address at my profile. I was going to print them all in one post, but I acquired too many. Political agreement doesn't matter. Atleast every month I'll continue this series. Leave comments about food, the blog, restaraunts etc. Everyone who sent recipes, will eventually have them published. I'm going in random order.
My first recipe comes from Chris Ioanniu G, from Athens Greece. Chris's blog is Blog #1. It covers art and on occasion politics. My favorite post was about film credits and poster graphic designer Saul Bass. That post will give you the feeling, you get when you see great art. Chris got on my good side with this.
Now the main event:
Ingredients
½ cup oil
½ cup sugar
½ tsp anise extract
½ tsp lemon extract
3 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
Prep Time
15-30 minutes
Ouantity
About 3 dozen
Preparation Instructions
Beat eggs with mixer 3 minutes then stir in oil, extracts & sugar. Add flour and baking powder to the mixture, mix to form dough. Form balls & roll in the palm of your hands to form 4 inch strips & then shape into a knot. Place on lightly grease cookie sheets and bake at 350 for 10 - 15 minutes. Cookies are done when lightly browned. Serving: serve warm with coffee or cool and frost with a vanilla cream frosting using confecters sugar a little warm milk, tab of melted butter, 1 tsp of vanilla extractRENEGADE EYE
My first recipe comes from Chris Ioanniu G, from Athens Greece. Chris's blog is Blog #1. It covers art and on occasion politics. My favorite post was about film credits and poster graphic designer Saul Bass. That post will give you the feeling, you get when you see great art. Chris got on my good side with this.
Now the main event:
Lemon Anise Cookies
Ingredients
½ cup oil
½ cup sugar
½ tsp anise extract
½ tsp lemon extract
3 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
Prep Time
15-30 minutes
Ouantity
About 3 dozen
Preparation Instructions
Beat eggs with mixer 3 minutes then stir in oil, extracts & sugar. Add flour and baking powder to the mixture, mix to form dough. Form balls & roll in the palm of your hands to form 4 inch strips & then shape into a knot. Place on lightly grease cookie sheets and bake at 350 for 10 - 15 minutes. Cookies are done when lightly browned. Serving: serve warm with coffee or cool and frost with a vanilla cream frosting using confecters sugar a little warm milk, tab of melted butter, 1 tsp of vanilla extractRENEGADE EYE
Monday, March 10, 2008
$300 MILLION FROM CHAVEZ TO FARC A FAKE
This article is already a few days dated, but it ties together the loose ends.Renegade Eye
Here’s the written evidence
… and - please say it ain’t so! - Obama and Hillary attack Ecuador
By Greg Palast
March 06 2008
Do you believe this?
This past weekend, Colombia invaded Ecuador, killed a guerrilla chief in the jungle, opened his laptop – and what did the Colombians find? A message to Hugo Chavez that he sent the FARC guerrillas $300 million – which they’re using to obtain uranium to make a dirty bomb!
That’s what George Bush tells us. And he got that from his buddy, the strange right-wing President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe.
So: After the fact, Colombia justifies its attempt to provoke a border war as a way to stop the threat of WMDs! Uh, where have we heard that before?
The US press snorted up this line about Chavez’ $300 million to “terrorists” quicker than the young Bush inhaling Colombia’s powdered export.
What the US press did not do is look at the evidence, the email in the magic laptop. (Presumably, the FARC leader’s last words were, “Listen, my password is ….”)
I read them. (You can read them here) While you can read it all in español, here is, in translation, the one and only mention of the alleged $300 million from Chavez:
“… With relation to the 300, which from now on we will call “dossier,” efforts are now going forward at the instructions of the boss to the cojo [slang term for ‘cripple’], which I will explain in a separate note. Let’s call the boss Ángel, and the cripple Ernesto.”
Got that? Where is Hugo? Where’s 300 million? And 300 what? Indeed, in context, the note is all about the hostage exchange with the FARC that Chavez was working on at the time (December 23, 2007) at the request of the Colombian government.
Indeed, the entire remainder of the email is all about the mechanism of the hostage exchange. Here’s the next line:
“To receive the three freed ones, Chavez proposes three options: Plan A. Do it to via of a ‘humanitarian caravan’; one that will involve Venezuela, France, the Vatican[?], Switzerland, European Union, democrats [civil society], Argentina, Red Cross, etc.”
As to the 300, I must note that the FARC’s previous prisoner exchange involved 300 prisoners. Is that what the ‘300’ refers to? ¿Quien sabe? Unlike Uribe, Bush and the US press, I won’t guess or make up a phastasmogoric story about Chavez mailing checks to the jungle.
To bolster their case, the Colombians claim, with no evidence whatsoever, that the mysterious “Angel” is the code name for Chavez. But in the memo, Chavez goes by the code name … Chavez.
Well, so what? This is what . . . .
Colombia’s invasion into Ecuador is a rank violation of international law, condemned by every single Latin member of the Organization of American States. But George Bush just loved it. He called Uribe to back Colombia, against, “the continuing assault by narco-terrorists as well as the provocative maneuvers by the regime in Venezuela.”
Well, our President may have gotten the facts ass-backward, but Bush knows what he’s doing: shoring up his last, faltering ally in South America, Uribe, a desperate man in deep political trouble.
Uribe claims he is going to bring charges against Chavez before the International Criminal Court. If Uribe goes there in person, I suggest he take a toothbrush: it was just discovered that right-wing death squads held murder-planning sessions at Uribe’s ranch. Uribe’s associates have been called before the nation’s Supreme Court and may face prison.
In other words, it’s a good time for a desperate Uribe to use that old politico’s wheeze, the threat of war, to drown out accusations of his own criminality. Furthermore, Uribe’s attack literally killed negotiations with FARC by killing FARC’s negotiator, Raul Reyes. Reyes was in talks with both Ecuador and Chavez about another prisoner exchange. Uribe authorized the negotiations. However, Uribe knew, should those talks have succeeded in obtaining the release of those kidnapped by the FARC, credit would have been heaped on Ecuador and Chavez, and discredit heaped on Uribe.
Luckily for a hemisphere on the verge of flames, the President of Ecuador, Raphael Correa, is one of the most level-headed, thoughtful men I’ve ever encountered.
Correa is now flying from Quito to Brazilia to Caracas to keep the region from blowing sky high. While moving troops to his border – no chief of state can permit foreign tanks on their sovereign soil – Correa also refuses sanctuary to the FARC . Indeed, Ecuador has routed out 47 FARC bases, a better track record than Colombia’s own, corrupt military.
For his cool, peaceable handling of the crisis, I will forgive Correa for apologizing for his calling Bush, “a dimwitted President who has done great damage to his country and the world.” (Watch an excerpt of my interview with Correa here.)
Amateur Hour in Blue
We can trust Correa to keep the peace South of the Border. But can we trust our Presidents-to-be?
The current man in the Oval Office, George Bush, simply can’t help himself: an outlaw invasion by a right-wing death-squad promoter is just fine with him.
But guess who couldn’t wait to parrot the Bush line? Hillary Clinton, still explaining that her vote to invade Iraq was not a vote to invade Iraq, issued a statement nearly identical to Bush’s, blessing the invasion of Ecuador as Colombia’s “right to defend itself.” And she added, “Hugo Chávez must stop these provoking actions.” Huh?
I assumed that Obama wouldn’t jump on this landmine – especially after he was blasted as a foreign policy amateur for suggesting he would invade across Pakistan’s border to hunt terrorists.
It’s embarrassing that Barack repeated Hillary’s line nearly verbatim, announcing, “the Colombian government has every right to defend itself.”
(I’m sure Hillary’s position wasn’t influenced by the loan of a campaign jet to her by Frank Giustra. Giustra has given over a hundred million dollars to Bill Clinton projects. Last year, Bill introduced Giustra to Colombia’s Uribe. On the spot, Giustra cut a lucrative deal with Uribe for Colombian oil.)
Then there’s Mr. War Hero. John McCain weighed in with his own idiocies, announcing that, “Hugo Chavez is establish[ing] a dictatorship,” presumably because, unlike George Bush, Chavez counts all the votes in Venezuelan elections.
But now our story gets tricky and icky.
The wise media critic Jeff Cohen told me to watch for the press naming McCain as a foreign policy expert and labeling the Democrats as amateurs. Sure enough, the New York Times, on the news pages Wednesday, called McCain, “a national security pro.”
McCain is the “pro” who said the war in Iraq would cost nearly nothing in lives or treasury dollars.
But, on the Colombian invasion of Ecuador, McCain said, “I hope that tensions will be relaxed, President Chavez will remove those troops from the borders - as well as the Ecuadorians - and relations continue to improve between the two.”
It’s not quite English, but it’s definitely not Bush. And weirdly, it’s definitely not Obama and Clinton cheerleading Colombia’s war on Ecuador.
Democrats, are you listening? The only thing worse than the media attacking Obama and Clinton as amateurs is the Democratic candidates’ frightening desire to prove them right.Greg Palast
Here’s the written evidence
… and - please say it ain’t so! - Obama and Hillary attack Ecuador
By Greg Palast
March 06 2008
Do you believe this?
This past weekend, Colombia invaded Ecuador, killed a guerrilla chief in the jungle, opened his laptop – and what did the Colombians find? A message to Hugo Chavez that he sent the FARC guerrillas $300 million – which they’re using to obtain uranium to make a dirty bomb!
That’s what George Bush tells us. And he got that from his buddy, the strange right-wing President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe.
So: After the fact, Colombia justifies its attempt to provoke a border war as a way to stop the threat of WMDs! Uh, where have we heard that before?
The US press snorted up this line about Chavez’ $300 million to “terrorists” quicker than the young Bush inhaling Colombia’s powdered export.
What the US press did not do is look at the evidence, the email in the magic laptop. (Presumably, the FARC leader’s last words were, “Listen, my password is ….”)
I read them. (You can read them here) While you can read it all in español, here is, in translation, the one and only mention of the alleged $300 million from Chavez:
“… With relation to the 300, which from now on we will call “dossier,” efforts are now going forward at the instructions of the boss to the cojo [slang term for ‘cripple’], which I will explain in a separate note. Let’s call the boss Ángel, and the cripple Ernesto.”
Got that? Where is Hugo? Where’s 300 million? And 300 what? Indeed, in context, the note is all about the hostage exchange with the FARC that Chavez was working on at the time (December 23, 2007) at the request of the Colombian government.
Indeed, the entire remainder of the email is all about the mechanism of the hostage exchange. Here’s the next line:
“To receive the three freed ones, Chavez proposes three options: Plan A. Do it to via of a ‘humanitarian caravan’; one that will involve Venezuela, France, the Vatican[?], Switzerland, European Union, democrats [civil society], Argentina, Red Cross, etc.”
As to the 300, I must note that the FARC’s previous prisoner exchange involved 300 prisoners. Is that what the ‘300’ refers to? ¿Quien sabe? Unlike Uribe, Bush and the US press, I won’t guess or make up a phastasmogoric story about Chavez mailing checks to the jungle.
To bolster their case, the Colombians claim, with no evidence whatsoever, that the mysterious “Angel” is the code name for Chavez. But in the memo, Chavez goes by the code name … Chavez.
Well, so what? This is what . . . .
Colombia’s invasion into Ecuador is a rank violation of international law, condemned by every single Latin member of the Organization of American States. But George Bush just loved it. He called Uribe to back Colombia, against, “the continuing assault by narco-terrorists as well as the provocative maneuvers by the regime in Venezuela.”
Well, our President may have gotten the facts ass-backward, but Bush knows what he’s doing: shoring up his last, faltering ally in South America, Uribe, a desperate man in deep political trouble.
Uribe claims he is going to bring charges against Chavez before the International Criminal Court. If Uribe goes there in person, I suggest he take a toothbrush: it was just discovered that right-wing death squads held murder-planning sessions at Uribe’s ranch. Uribe’s associates have been called before the nation’s Supreme Court and may face prison.
In other words, it’s a good time for a desperate Uribe to use that old politico’s wheeze, the threat of war, to drown out accusations of his own criminality. Furthermore, Uribe’s attack literally killed negotiations with FARC by killing FARC’s negotiator, Raul Reyes. Reyes was in talks with both Ecuador and Chavez about another prisoner exchange. Uribe authorized the negotiations. However, Uribe knew, should those talks have succeeded in obtaining the release of those kidnapped by the FARC, credit would have been heaped on Ecuador and Chavez, and discredit heaped on Uribe.
Luckily for a hemisphere on the verge of flames, the President of Ecuador, Raphael Correa, is one of the most level-headed, thoughtful men I’ve ever encountered.
Correa is now flying from Quito to Brazilia to Caracas to keep the region from blowing sky high. While moving troops to his border – no chief of state can permit foreign tanks on their sovereign soil – Correa also refuses sanctuary to the FARC . Indeed, Ecuador has routed out 47 FARC bases, a better track record than Colombia’s own, corrupt military.
For his cool, peaceable handling of the crisis, I will forgive Correa for apologizing for his calling Bush, “a dimwitted President who has done great damage to his country and the world.” (Watch an excerpt of my interview with Correa here.)
Amateur Hour in Blue
We can trust Correa to keep the peace South of the Border. But can we trust our Presidents-to-be?
The current man in the Oval Office, George Bush, simply can’t help himself: an outlaw invasion by a right-wing death-squad promoter is just fine with him.
But guess who couldn’t wait to parrot the Bush line? Hillary Clinton, still explaining that her vote to invade Iraq was not a vote to invade Iraq, issued a statement nearly identical to Bush’s, blessing the invasion of Ecuador as Colombia’s “right to defend itself.” And she added, “Hugo Chávez must stop these provoking actions.” Huh?
I assumed that Obama wouldn’t jump on this landmine – especially after he was blasted as a foreign policy amateur for suggesting he would invade across Pakistan’s border to hunt terrorists.
It’s embarrassing that Barack repeated Hillary’s line nearly verbatim, announcing, “the Colombian government has every right to defend itself.”
(I’m sure Hillary’s position wasn’t influenced by the loan of a campaign jet to her by Frank Giustra. Giustra has given over a hundred million dollars to Bill Clinton projects. Last year, Bill introduced Giustra to Colombia’s Uribe. On the spot, Giustra cut a lucrative deal with Uribe for Colombian oil.)
Then there’s Mr. War Hero. John McCain weighed in with his own idiocies, announcing that, “Hugo Chavez is establish[ing] a dictatorship,” presumably because, unlike George Bush, Chavez counts all the votes in Venezuelan elections.
But now our story gets tricky and icky.
The wise media critic Jeff Cohen told me to watch for the press naming McCain as a foreign policy expert and labeling the Democrats as amateurs. Sure enough, the New York Times, on the news pages Wednesday, called McCain, “a national security pro.”
McCain is the “pro” who said the war in Iraq would cost nearly nothing in lives or treasury dollars.
But, on the Colombian invasion of Ecuador, McCain said, “I hope that tensions will be relaxed, President Chavez will remove those troops from the borders - as well as the Ecuadorians - and relations continue to improve between the two.”
It’s not quite English, but it’s definitely not Bush. And weirdly, it’s definitely not Obama and Clinton cheerleading Colombia’s war on Ecuador.
Democrats, are you listening? The only thing worse than the media attacking Obama and Clinton as amateurs is the Democratic candidates’ frightening desire to prove them right.Greg Palast
Saturday, March 08, 2008
In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of IWD, Let's Turn This Day Into a Day of Protest Against Sexual Apartheid
Hello and Happy International Women’s Day!
In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of IWD, let’s turn this day into a day of protest against sexual apartheid.
To support our campaign, you can add your name to our declaration against sexual apartheid, which you can read here: http://www.equal-rights-now.com/etelaiye/et-pages/080206-englisi-sigen-petition.html. Email your name, organisation (if any) and country of residence to maryamnamazie@gmail.com or nohejab@yahoo.com.
You can also join our free seminar on Sexual Apartheid, Political Islam and Women’s Rights on Monday, March 10, from 6:30-9:30pm at Conway Hall, London. Mina Ahadi, Louise Couling, Houzan Mahmoud, Maryam Namazie and Joan Smith will be speaking; Hanne Stinson will be chairing the event. For more information, go to: http://www.secularism.org.uk/importantwomensdaymeetingthiswee.html
You can also read more about sexual apartheid in No Hejab number 1, the first issue of the English publication of Equal Rights Now - Organisation against Women’s Discrimination in Iran edited by Sohaila Sharifi by going to http://www.equal-rights-now.com/nashrieh-pdf/_bi_hejab_english_No.pdf.
Best wishes,
Maryam Namazie
BM Box 1919
London WC1N 3XX, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 7719166731
m.namazie@ukonline.co.uk
www.maryamnamazie.com
www.maryamnamazie.blogspot.com
www.ex-muslim.org.uk
www.equal-rights-now.com
www.thirdcamp.com
www.wpiran.org
Maryam Namazie
Thursday, March 06, 2008
On the Assassination of Raúl Reyes and the Colombian Government’s Aggression Against Ecuador and Venezuela - CMR Statement
By Corriente Marxista Revolucionaria in Venezuela
Thursday, 06 March 2008
1)American imperialism is intensifying its offensive against the Latin American revolution. They are witnessing how control is slipping through their fingers and are stepping up their campaign against the revolution. In particular, the imperialists are aiming their fire against the Venezuelan revolution, a point of reference for the masses across the whole of Latin America. All this explains the manoeuvres of the imperialists and the pressure they are exercising in an attempt to put a halt to the shift to the left taking place in the whole continent and especially in Venezuela.
2)In this sense, Chávez's successful mediation to free the hostages, on top of the internal crisis in Colombia and the perspectives for peace, have pushed the Colombian oligarchy and the American imperialists to brutally attack the FARC, assassinating Raúl Reyes, who was in charge of the negotiations to release the hostages. Chávez's mediation in the process has generated huge expectations amongst the masses and has provoked further divisions within the ruling class. At the same time, this very success meant that for the imperialists it would be much more difficult to try to criminalise the Venezuelan revolution in the eyes of the working masses around the world.
3) The assassination of Raúl Reyes and the killing of other 18 FARC guerrillas exposes, once more, the policy of the Colombian State and the US government of trying to avoid any peaceful way out of the conflict with the guerrillas, revealing thus their complete lack of interest in the lives of the hostages. The Uribe government survives on the basis of inciting internal war and constantly using the "struggle" against the guerrillas as a means of attacking the Colombian left. With this massacre, the Uribe government and American imperialism aim to derail the negotiations over the release of the hostages and thus deny any peace in Colombia.
4)The Colombian government, in its attempts to sabotage the release of the hostages and any peaceful way out of the conflict, has not hesitated to invade and bomb Ecuadorian territory. To cove up this abuse, the Uribe government has had to resort to a mountain of lies. Firstly, Uribe stated that the Ecuadorian government knew about the attack and that this had taken place after the FARC had attacked them. He also said that the guerrillas had been killed while the Colombian army was chasing them, something which later was proven to be false. The troops deployed in the area by the Ecuadorian government were witnesses to the fact that most of the dead guerrillas were in pyjamas, having been taken by surprise while asleep. When evidence about these lies started to pile up, the Colombian government changed its tune and pointed the finger at Ecuador, accusing the governments of Rafael Correa of supporting the guerrillas, using alleged documents found in the attack against the FARC.
5)The tactic that the American imperialists and their puppet in Bogotá are following is to criminalise the governments of Ecuador and Venezuela, trying to link them up with the guerrillas and drug trafficking in order to criminalise the revolution in both countries and prepare new acts of aggression against them.
6)While all this has been taking place the Colombian government has moved troops towards its border with Venezuela. Faced with the threat that this means, president Chávez ordered that 10 battalions be move to the border with Colombia in order to prevent any aggression against Venezuela or incursion of the Colombia army.
7)The working class of Latin America and around the world must be aware of the danger of an attack on Venezuela or Ecuador. North American imperialism will not hesitate to divide the peoples of Latin America, who are all brothers and sisters, to set them one against the other and subdue them; they will not think twice about balkanising Latin America to maintain the capitalist system and imperialist exploitation. The reactionary government of Uribe, a puppet of North American imperialism, could serve as an instrument for a military aggression on Venezuela or Ecuador. The Colombian government, armed to the teeth by the imperialists, is a threat to the Venezuelan revolution and the whole of the continent. Should Colombia carry out a new aggression, the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador would be justified in defending themselves with any means at their disposal.
8)The assassination of Raúl Reyes demonstrates that the only way of achieving peace in Colombia is through the revolutionary overthrow of the Uribe government by the Colombian working class in alliance with the peasants. Only a mass movement struggling for socialism can guarantee peace, with the struggle for the expropriation of the means of production from the bourgeoisie and the destruction of the Colombian state. A purely military victory over the Colombian state is impossible. More than 70 years of heroic guerrilla struggle have demonstrated the limitations of this method of struggle, leading up to the current impasse. The guerrilla struggle in the countryside can only be victorious as an auxiliary to the working class struggle in the cities. Only the insurrection of the armed working masses in the cities can put an end to this reactionary and bloody regime.
9)The Marxists of the CMR repudiate the assassination of Raúl Reyes and the violation of Ecuadorian sovereignty by the Colombian army, and support the preventive measures taken by the governments of presidents Chávez and Correa. There are powerful interests within the Colombian state not to deliver peace. More and more the Colombian bourgeoisie is divided due to the weight of the paramilitary in the country and in the State apparatus. This crisis reflects the awakening of the masses after years of brutal repression and a unilateral civil war carried out by the Colombian State and their paramilitaries.
10)Should American imperialism move in the direction of imposing a military action by the Colombian army against Venezuela, the workers, peasants and poor of Colombia must rise up against this imperialist intervention. Any aggression against Venezuela or Ecuador should be seen as the rallying call for the socialist revolution in Colombia. In his attempt to put out the revolutionary fire in Latin America, Uribe will find that he is sparking it off in Bogotá.
11)In Venezuela and Ecuador, the people and the workers would help to free the Colombian people and undermine the threat of the Colombian bourgeoisie and of American imperialism, by deepening the socialist revolution in each of these countries, expropriating the capitalists and building an authentic revolutionary state. That is to say, they would show the way to the oppressed people of Colombia in their struggle to shake off the yoke of capitalism and imperialism. That is the best way of preventing war and the manoeuvres of imperialism.
12)Our slogans are: Against the Uribe-Bush aggression against Ecuador and Venezuela! Unite the workers and peasants of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela! Down with the reactionary Uribe government! Long live the socialist revolution in Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador! Long live the socialist federation of Latin America and the Caribbean! RENEGADE EYE
Thursday, 06 March 2008
1)American imperialism is intensifying its offensive against the Latin American revolution. They are witnessing how control is slipping through their fingers and are stepping up their campaign against the revolution. In particular, the imperialists are aiming their fire against the Venezuelan revolution, a point of reference for the masses across the whole of Latin America. All this explains the manoeuvres of the imperialists and the pressure they are exercising in an attempt to put a halt to the shift to the left taking place in the whole continent and especially in Venezuela.
2)In this sense, Chávez's successful mediation to free the hostages, on top of the internal crisis in Colombia and the perspectives for peace, have pushed the Colombian oligarchy and the American imperialists to brutally attack the FARC, assassinating Raúl Reyes, who was in charge of the negotiations to release the hostages. Chávez's mediation in the process has generated huge expectations amongst the masses and has provoked further divisions within the ruling class. At the same time, this very success meant that for the imperialists it would be much more difficult to try to criminalise the Venezuelan revolution in the eyes of the working masses around the world.
3) The assassination of Raúl Reyes and the killing of other 18 FARC guerrillas exposes, once more, the policy of the Colombian State and the US government of trying to avoid any peaceful way out of the conflict with the guerrillas, revealing thus their complete lack of interest in the lives of the hostages. The Uribe government survives on the basis of inciting internal war and constantly using the "struggle" against the guerrillas as a means of attacking the Colombian left. With this massacre, the Uribe government and American imperialism aim to derail the negotiations over the release of the hostages and thus deny any peace in Colombia.
4)The Colombian government, in its attempts to sabotage the release of the hostages and any peaceful way out of the conflict, has not hesitated to invade and bomb Ecuadorian territory. To cove up this abuse, the Uribe government has had to resort to a mountain of lies. Firstly, Uribe stated that the Ecuadorian government knew about the attack and that this had taken place after the FARC had attacked them. He also said that the guerrillas had been killed while the Colombian army was chasing them, something which later was proven to be false. The troops deployed in the area by the Ecuadorian government were witnesses to the fact that most of the dead guerrillas were in pyjamas, having been taken by surprise while asleep. When evidence about these lies started to pile up, the Colombian government changed its tune and pointed the finger at Ecuador, accusing the governments of Rafael Correa of supporting the guerrillas, using alleged documents found in the attack against the FARC.
5)The tactic that the American imperialists and their puppet in Bogotá are following is to criminalise the governments of Ecuador and Venezuela, trying to link them up with the guerrillas and drug trafficking in order to criminalise the revolution in both countries and prepare new acts of aggression against them.
6)While all this has been taking place the Colombian government has moved troops towards its border with Venezuela. Faced with the threat that this means, president Chávez ordered that 10 battalions be move to the border with Colombia in order to prevent any aggression against Venezuela or incursion of the Colombia army.
7)The working class of Latin America and around the world must be aware of the danger of an attack on Venezuela or Ecuador. North American imperialism will not hesitate to divide the peoples of Latin America, who are all brothers and sisters, to set them one against the other and subdue them; they will not think twice about balkanising Latin America to maintain the capitalist system and imperialist exploitation. The reactionary government of Uribe, a puppet of North American imperialism, could serve as an instrument for a military aggression on Venezuela or Ecuador. The Colombian government, armed to the teeth by the imperialists, is a threat to the Venezuelan revolution and the whole of the continent. Should Colombia carry out a new aggression, the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador would be justified in defending themselves with any means at their disposal.
8)The assassination of Raúl Reyes demonstrates that the only way of achieving peace in Colombia is through the revolutionary overthrow of the Uribe government by the Colombian working class in alliance with the peasants. Only a mass movement struggling for socialism can guarantee peace, with the struggle for the expropriation of the means of production from the bourgeoisie and the destruction of the Colombian state. A purely military victory over the Colombian state is impossible. More than 70 years of heroic guerrilla struggle have demonstrated the limitations of this method of struggle, leading up to the current impasse. The guerrilla struggle in the countryside can only be victorious as an auxiliary to the working class struggle in the cities. Only the insurrection of the armed working masses in the cities can put an end to this reactionary and bloody regime.
9)The Marxists of the CMR repudiate the assassination of Raúl Reyes and the violation of Ecuadorian sovereignty by the Colombian army, and support the preventive measures taken by the governments of presidents Chávez and Correa. There are powerful interests within the Colombian state not to deliver peace. More and more the Colombian bourgeoisie is divided due to the weight of the paramilitary in the country and in the State apparatus. This crisis reflects the awakening of the masses after years of brutal repression and a unilateral civil war carried out by the Colombian State and their paramilitaries.
10)Should American imperialism move in the direction of imposing a military action by the Colombian army against Venezuela, the workers, peasants and poor of Colombia must rise up against this imperialist intervention. Any aggression against Venezuela or Ecuador should be seen as the rallying call for the socialist revolution in Colombia. In his attempt to put out the revolutionary fire in Latin America, Uribe will find that he is sparking it off in Bogotá.
11)In Venezuela and Ecuador, the people and the workers would help to free the Colombian people and undermine the threat of the Colombian bourgeoisie and of American imperialism, by deepening the socialist revolution in each of these countries, expropriating the capitalists and building an authentic revolutionary state. That is to say, they would show the way to the oppressed people of Colombia in their struggle to shake off the yoke of capitalism and imperialism. That is the best way of preventing war and the manoeuvres of imperialism.
12)Our slogans are: Against the Uribe-Bush aggression against Ecuador and Venezuela! Unite the workers and peasants of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela! Down with the reactionary Uribe government! Long live the socialist revolution in Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador! Long live the socialist federation of Latin America and the Caribbean! RENEGADE EYE
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
The Obama Craze: Count Me Out
This is from Counterpunch. It exposes Obama's politics as an individual. I would take it farther to say, Obama's politics are typical of the Democratic Party. I believe if the US had a party based on the union movement as the NDP in Canada, the Labor Party of Australia or PSUV in Venezuela, there would be a mass exodus from the Democratic Party. I don't believe the Green Party is the alternative party formation, since it lacks a program
and class basis.
By Matt Gonzalez
Part of me shares the enthusiasm for Barack Obama. After all, how could someone calling themself a progressive not sense the importance of what it means to have an African-American so close to the presidency? But as his campaign has unfolded, and I heard that we are not red states or blue states for the 6th or 7th time, I realized I knew virtually nothing about him.
Like most, I know he gave a stirring speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. I know he defeated Alan Keyes in the Illinois Senate race; although it wasn't much of a contest (Keyes was living in Maryland when he announced). Recently, I started looking into Obama's voting record, and I'm afraid to say I'm not just uninspired: I'm downright fearful. Here's why:
This is a candidate who says he's going to usher in change; that he is a different kind of politician who has the skills to get things done. He reminds us again and again that he had the foresight to oppose the war in Iraq. And he seems to have a genuine interest in lifting up the poor.
But his record suggests that he is incapable of ushering in any kind of change I'd like to see. It is one of accommodation and concession to the very political powers that we need to reign in and oppose if we are to make truly lasting advances.
THE WAR IN IRAQ
Let's start with his signature position against the Iraq war. Obama has sent mixed messages at best.
First, he opposed the war in Iraq while in the Illinois state legislature. Once he was running for US Senate though, when public opinion and support for the war was at its highest, he was quoted in the July 27, 2004 Chicago Tribune as saying, "There's not that much difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage.
The difference, in my mind, is who's in a position to execute." The Tribune went on to say that Obama, "now believes US forces must remain to stabilize the war-ravaged nation a policy not dissimilar to the current approach of the Bush administration."
Obama's campaign says he was referring to the ongoing occupation and how best to stabilize the region. But why wouldn't he have taken the opportunity to urge withdrawal if he truly opposed the war? Was he trying to signal to conservative voters that he would subjugate his anti-war position if elected to the US Senate and perhaps support a lengthy occupation? Well as it turns out, he's done just that.
Since taking office in January 2005 he has voted to approve every war appropriation the Republicans have put forward, totaling over $300 billion. He also voted to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State despite her complicity in the Bush Administration's various false justifications for going to war in Iraq. Why would he vote to make one of the architects of "Operation Iraqi Liberation" the head of US foreign policy? Curiously, he lacked the courage of 13 of his colleagues who voted against her confirmation.
And though he often cites his background as a civil rights lawyer, Obama voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act in July 2005, easily the worse attack on civil liberties in the last half-century. It allows for wholesale eavesdropping on American citizens under the guise of anti-terrorism efforts.
And in March 2006, Obama went out of his way to travel to Connecticut to campaign for Senator Joseph Lieberman who faced a tough challenge by anti-war candidate Ned Lamont. At a Democratic Party dinner attended by Lamont, Obama called Lieberman "his mentor" and urged those in attendance to vote and give financial contributions to him. This is the same Lieberman who Alexander Cockburn called "Bush's closest Democratic ally on the Iraq War." Why would Obama have done that if he was truly against the war?
Recently, with anti-war sentiment on the rise, Obama declared he will get our combat troops out of Iraq in 2009. But Obama isn't actually saying he wants to get all of our troops out of Iraq. At a September 2007 debate before the New Hampshire primary, moderated by Tim Russert, Obama refused to commit to getting our troops out of Iraq by January 2013 and, on the campaign trail, he has repeatedly stated his desire to add 100,000 combat troops to the military.
At the same event, Obama committed to keeping enough soldiers in Iraq to "carry out our counter-terrorism activities there" which includes "striking at al Qaeda in Iraq." What he didn't say is this continued warfare will require an estimated 60,000 troops to remain in Iraq according to a May 2006 report prepared by the Center for American Progress. Moreover, it appears he intends to "redeploy" the troops he takes out of the unpopular war in Iraq and send them to Afghanistan. So it appears that under Obama's plan the US will remain heavily engaged in war.
This is hardly a position to get excited about.
CLASS ACTION REFORM:
In 2005, Obama joined Republicans in passing a law dubiously called the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) that would shut down state courts as a venue to hear many class action lawsuits. Long a desired objective of large corporations and President George Bush, Obama in effect voted to deny redress in many of the courts where these kinds of cases have the best chance of surviving corporate legal challenges. Instead, it forces them into the backlogged Republican-judge dominated federal courts.
By contrast, Senators Clinton, Edwards and Kerry joined 23 others to vote against CAFA, noting the "reform" was a thinly-veiled "special interest extravaganza" that favored banking, creditors and other corporate interests. David Sirota, the former spokesman for Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, commented on CAFA in the June 26, 2006 issue of The Nation, "Opposed by most major civil rights and consumer watchdog groups, this Big Business-backed legislation was sold to the public as a way to stop "frivolous" lawsuits. But everyone in Washington knew the bill's real objective was to protect corporate abusers."
Nation contributor Dan Zegart noted further: "On its face, the class-action bill is mere procedural tinkering, transferring from state to federal court actions involving more than $5 million where any plaintiff is from a different state from the defendant company. But federal courts are much more hostile to class actions than their state counterparts; such cases tend to be rooted in the finer points of state law, in which federal judges are reluctant to dabble. And even if federal judges do take on these suits, with only 678 of them on the bench (compared with 9,200 state judges), already overburdened dockets will grow. Thus, the bill will make class actions most of which involve discrimination, consumer fraud and wage-and-hour violations all but impossible. One example: After forty lawsuits were filed against Wal-Mart for allegedly forcing employees to work "off the clock," four state courts certified these suits as class actions. Not a single federal court did so, although the practice probably involves hundreds of thousands of employees nationwide."
Why would a civil rights lawyer knowingly make it harder for working-class people ( Or the people of Hunter Point suing Lennar) to have their day in court, in effect shutting off avenues of redress?
CREDIT CARD INTEREST RATES:
Obama has a way of ducking hard votes or explaining away his bad votes by trying to blame poorly-written statutes. Case in point: an amendment he voted on as part of a recent bankruptcy bill before the US Senate would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. Inexplicably, Obama voted against it, although it would have been the beginning of setting these predatory lending rates under federal control. Even Senator Hillary Clinton supported it.
Now Obama explains his vote by saying the amendment was poorly written or set the ceiling too high. His explanation isn't credible as Obama offered no lower number as an alternative, and didn't put forward his own amendment clarifying whatever language he found objectionable.
Why wouldn't Obama have voted to create the first federal ceiling on predatory credit card interest rates, particularly as he calls himself a champion of the poor and middle classes? Perhaps he was signaling to the corporate establishment that they need not fear him. For all of his dynamic rhetoric about lifting up the masses, it seems Obama has little intention of doing anything concrete to reverse the cycle of poverty many struggle to overcome.
LIMITING NON-ECONOMIC DAMAGES:
These seemingly unusual votes wherein Obama aligns himself with Republican Party interests aren't new. While in the Illinois Senate, Obama voted to limit the recovery that victims of medical malpractice could obtain through the courts. Capping non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases means a victim cannot fully recover for pain and suffering or for punitive damages. Moreover, it ignored that courts were already empowered to adjust awards when appropriate, and that the Illinois Supreme Court had previously ruled such limits on tort reform violated the state constitution.
In the US Senate, Obama continued interfering with patients' full recovery for tortious conduct. He was a sponsor of the National Medical Error Disclosure and Compensation Act of 2005. The bill requires hospitals to disclose errors to patients and has a mechanism whereby disclosure, coupled with apologies, is rewarded by limiting patients' economic recovery. Rather than simply mandating disclosure, Obama's solution is to trade what should be mandated for something that should never be given away: namely, full recovery for the injured patient.
MINING LAW OF 1872:
In November 2007, Obama came out against a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining Law of 1872. The current statute, signed into law by Ulysses Grant, allows mining companies to pay a nominal fee, as little as $2.50 an acre, to mine for hardrock minerals like gold, silver, and copper without paying royalties. Yearly profits for mining hardrock on public lands is estimated to be in excess of $1 billion a year according to Earthworks, a group that monitors the industry. Not surprisingly, the industry spends freely when it comes to lobbying: an estimated $60 million between 1998-2004 according to The Center on Public Integrity. And it appears to be paying off, yet again.
The Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2007 would have finally overhauled the law and allowed American taxpayers to reap part of the royalties (4 percent of gross revenue on existing mining operations and 8 percent on new ones). The bill provided a revenue source to cleanup abandoned hardrock mines, which is likely to cost taxpayers over $50 million, and addressed health and safety concerns in the 11 affected western states.
Later it came to light that one of Obama's key advisors in Nevada is a Nevada-based lobbyist in the employ of various mining companies (CBS News "Obama's Position On Mining Law Questioned. Democrat Shares Position with Mining Executives Who Employ Lobbyist Advising Him," November 14, 2007).
REGULATING NUCLEAR INDUSTRY:
The New York Times reported that, while campaigning in Iowa in December 2007, Obama boasted that he had passed a bill requiring nuclear plants to promptly report radioactive leaks. This came after residents of his home state of Illinois complained they were not told of leaks that occurred at a nuclear plant operated by Exelon Corporation.
The truth, however, was that Obama allowed the bill to be amended in Committee by Senate Republicans, replacing language mandating reporting with verbiage that merely offered guidance to regulators on how to address unreported leaks. The story noted that even this version of Obama's bill failed to pass the Senate, so it was unclear why Obama was claiming to have passed the legislation. The February 3, 2008 The New York Times article titled "Nuclear Leaks and Response Tested Obama in Senate" by Mike McIntire also noted the opinion of one of Obama's constituents, which was hardly enthusiastic about Obama's legislative efforts:
"Senator Obama's staff was sending us copies of the bill to review, and we could see it weakening with each successive draft," said Joe Cosgrove, a park district director in Will County, Ill., where low-level radioactive runoff had turned up in groundwater. "The teeth were just taken out of it."
As it turns out, the New York Times story noted: "Since 2003, executives and employees of Exelon, which is based in Illinois, have contributed at least $227,000 to Mr. Obama's campaigns for the United States Senate and for president. Two top Exelon officials, Frank M. Clark, executive vice president, and John W. Rogers Jr., a director, are among his largest fund-raisers."
ENERGY POLICY:
On energy policy, it turns out Obama is a big supporter of corn-based ethanol which is well known for being an energy-intensive crop to grow. It is estimated that seven barrels of oil are required to produce eight barrels of corn ethanol, according to research by the Cato Institute. Ethanol's impact on climate change is nominal and isn't "green" according to Alisa Gravitz, Co-op America executive director. "It simply isn't a major improvement over gasoline when it comes to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions." A 2006 University of Minnesota study by Jason Hill and David Tilman, and an earlier study published in BioScience in 2005, concur. (There's even concern that a reliance on corn-based ethanol would lead to higher food prices.)
So why would Obama be touting this as a solution to our oil dependency? Could it have something to do with the fact that the first presidential primary is located in Iowa, corn capital of the country? In legislative terms this means Obama voted in favor of $8 billion worth of corn subsidies in 2006 alone, when most of that money should have been committed to alternative energy sources such as solar, tidal and wind.
SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE:
Obama opposed single-payer bill HR676, sponsored by Congressmen Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers in 2006, although at least 75 members of Congress supported it. Single-payer works by trying to diminish the administrative costs that comprise somewhere around one-third of every health care dollar spent, by eliminating the duplicative nature of these services. The expected $300 billion in annual savings such a system would produce would go directly to cover the uninsured and expand coverage to those who already have insurance, according to Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.
Obama's own plan has been widely criticized for leaving health care industry administrative costs in place and for allowing millions of people to remain uninsured. "Sicko" filmmaker Michael Moore ridiculed it saying, "Obama wants the insurance companies to help us develop a new health care plan-the same companies who have created the mess in the first place."
NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT:
Regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement, Obama recently boasted, "I don't think NAFTA has been good for Americans, and I never have." Yet, Calvin Woodward reviewed Obama's record on NAFTA in a February 26, 2008 Associated Press article and found that comment to be misleading: "In his 2004 Senate campaign, Obama said the US should pursue more deals such as NAFTA, and argued more broadly that his opponent's call for tariffs would spark a trade war. AP reported then that the Illinois senator had spoken of enormous benefits having accrued to his state from NAFTA, while adding that he also called for more aggressive trade protections for US workers."
Putting aside campaign rhetoric, when actually given an opportunity to protect workers from unfair trade agreements, Obama cast the deciding vote against an amendment to a September 2005 Commerce Appropriations Bill, proposed by North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan, that would have prohibited US trade negotiators from weakening US laws that provide safeguards from unfair foreign trade practices. The bill would have been a vital tool to combat the outsourcing of jobs to foreign workers and would have ended a common corporate practice known as "pole-vaulting" over regulations, which allows companies doing foreign business to avoid "right to organize," "minimum wage," and other worker protections.
SOME FINAL EXAMPLES:
On March 2, 2007 Obama gave a speech at AIPAC, America's pro-Israeli government lobby, wherein he disavowed his previous support for the plight of the Palestinians. In what appears to be a troubling pattern, Obama told his audience what they wanted to hear. He recounted a one-sided history of the region and called for continued military support for Israel, rather than taking the opportunity to promote the various peace movements in and outside of Israel.
Why should we believe Obama has courage to bring about change? He wouldn't have his picture taken with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom when visiting San Francisco for a fundraiser in his honor because Obama was scared voters might think he supports gay marriage (Newsom acknowledged this to Reuters on January 26, 2007 and former Mayor Willie Brown admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle on February 5, 2008 that Obama told him he wanted to avoid Newsom for that reason.)
Obama acknowledges the disproportionate impact the death penalty has on blacks, but still supports it, while other politicians are fighting to stop it. (On December 17, 2007 New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine signed a bill banning the death penalty after it was passed by the New Jersey Assembly.)
On September 29, 2006, Obama joined Republicans in voting to build 700 miles of double fencing on the Mexican border (The Secure Fence Act of 2006), abandoning 19 of his colleagues who had the courage to oppose it. But now that he's campaigning in Texas and eager to win over Mexican-American voters, he says he'd employ a different border solution.
It is shocking how frequently and consistently Obama is willing to subjugate good decision making for his personal and political benefit.
Obama aggressively opposed initiating impeachment proceedings against the president ("Obama: Impeachment is not acceptable," USA Today, June 28, 2007) and he wouldn't even support Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold's effort to censure the Bush administration for illegally wiretapping American citizens in violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In Feingold's words "I'm amazed at Democrats cowering with this president's number's so low." Once again, it's troubling that Obama would take these positions and miss the opportunity to document the abuses of the Bush regime.
CONCLUSION:
Once I started looking at the votes Obama actually cast, I began to hear his rhetoric differently. The principal conclusion I draw about "change" and Barack Obama is that Obama needs to change his voting habits and stop pandering to win votes. If he does this he might someday make a decent candidate who could earn my support. For now Obama has fallen into a dangerous pattern of capitulation that he cannot reconcile with his growing popularity as an agent of change.
I remain impressed by the enthusiasm generated by Obama's style and skill as an orator. But I remain more loyal to my values, and I'm glad to say that I want no part in the Obama craze sweeping our country.
Matt Gonzalez is a former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and is running on Nader's ticket as a vice presidential candidate RENEGADE EYE
and class basis.
By Matt Gonzalez
Part of me shares the enthusiasm for Barack Obama. After all, how could someone calling themself a progressive not sense the importance of what it means to have an African-American so close to the presidency? But as his campaign has unfolded, and I heard that we are not red states or blue states for the 6th or 7th time, I realized I knew virtually nothing about him.
Like most, I know he gave a stirring speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. I know he defeated Alan Keyes in the Illinois Senate race; although it wasn't much of a contest (Keyes was living in Maryland when he announced). Recently, I started looking into Obama's voting record, and I'm afraid to say I'm not just uninspired: I'm downright fearful. Here's why:
This is a candidate who says he's going to usher in change; that he is a different kind of politician who has the skills to get things done. He reminds us again and again that he had the foresight to oppose the war in Iraq. And he seems to have a genuine interest in lifting up the poor.
But his record suggests that he is incapable of ushering in any kind of change I'd like to see. It is one of accommodation and concession to the very political powers that we need to reign in and oppose if we are to make truly lasting advances.
THE WAR IN IRAQ
Let's start with his signature position against the Iraq war. Obama has sent mixed messages at best.
First, he opposed the war in Iraq while in the Illinois state legislature. Once he was running for US Senate though, when public opinion and support for the war was at its highest, he was quoted in the July 27, 2004 Chicago Tribune as saying, "There's not that much difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage.
The difference, in my mind, is who's in a position to execute." The Tribune went on to say that Obama, "now believes US forces must remain to stabilize the war-ravaged nation a policy not dissimilar to the current approach of the Bush administration."
Obama's campaign says he was referring to the ongoing occupation and how best to stabilize the region. But why wouldn't he have taken the opportunity to urge withdrawal if he truly opposed the war? Was he trying to signal to conservative voters that he would subjugate his anti-war position if elected to the US Senate and perhaps support a lengthy occupation? Well as it turns out, he's done just that.
Since taking office in January 2005 he has voted to approve every war appropriation the Republicans have put forward, totaling over $300 billion. He also voted to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State despite her complicity in the Bush Administration's various false justifications for going to war in Iraq. Why would he vote to make one of the architects of "Operation Iraqi Liberation" the head of US foreign policy? Curiously, he lacked the courage of 13 of his colleagues who voted against her confirmation.
And though he often cites his background as a civil rights lawyer, Obama voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act in July 2005, easily the worse attack on civil liberties in the last half-century. It allows for wholesale eavesdropping on American citizens under the guise of anti-terrorism efforts.
And in March 2006, Obama went out of his way to travel to Connecticut to campaign for Senator Joseph Lieberman who faced a tough challenge by anti-war candidate Ned Lamont. At a Democratic Party dinner attended by Lamont, Obama called Lieberman "his mentor" and urged those in attendance to vote and give financial contributions to him. This is the same Lieberman who Alexander Cockburn called "Bush's closest Democratic ally on the Iraq War." Why would Obama have done that if he was truly against the war?
Recently, with anti-war sentiment on the rise, Obama declared he will get our combat troops out of Iraq in 2009. But Obama isn't actually saying he wants to get all of our troops out of Iraq. At a September 2007 debate before the New Hampshire primary, moderated by Tim Russert, Obama refused to commit to getting our troops out of Iraq by January 2013 and, on the campaign trail, he has repeatedly stated his desire to add 100,000 combat troops to the military.
At the same event, Obama committed to keeping enough soldiers in Iraq to "carry out our counter-terrorism activities there" which includes "striking at al Qaeda in Iraq." What he didn't say is this continued warfare will require an estimated 60,000 troops to remain in Iraq according to a May 2006 report prepared by the Center for American Progress. Moreover, it appears he intends to "redeploy" the troops he takes out of the unpopular war in Iraq and send them to Afghanistan. So it appears that under Obama's plan the US will remain heavily engaged in war.
This is hardly a position to get excited about.
CLASS ACTION REFORM:
In 2005, Obama joined Republicans in passing a law dubiously called the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) that would shut down state courts as a venue to hear many class action lawsuits. Long a desired objective of large corporations and President George Bush, Obama in effect voted to deny redress in many of the courts where these kinds of cases have the best chance of surviving corporate legal challenges. Instead, it forces them into the backlogged Republican-judge dominated federal courts.
By contrast, Senators Clinton, Edwards and Kerry joined 23 others to vote against CAFA, noting the "reform" was a thinly-veiled "special interest extravaganza" that favored banking, creditors and other corporate interests. David Sirota, the former spokesman for Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, commented on CAFA in the June 26, 2006 issue of The Nation, "Opposed by most major civil rights and consumer watchdog groups, this Big Business-backed legislation was sold to the public as a way to stop "frivolous" lawsuits. But everyone in Washington knew the bill's real objective was to protect corporate abusers."
Nation contributor Dan Zegart noted further: "On its face, the class-action bill is mere procedural tinkering, transferring from state to federal court actions involving more than $5 million where any plaintiff is from a different state from the defendant company. But federal courts are much more hostile to class actions than their state counterparts; such cases tend to be rooted in the finer points of state law, in which federal judges are reluctant to dabble. And even if federal judges do take on these suits, with only 678 of them on the bench (compared with 9,200 state judges), already overburdened dockets will grow. Thus, the bill will make class actions most of which involve discrimination, consumer fraud and wage-and-hour violations all but impossible. One example: After forty lawsuits were filed against Wal-Mart for allegedly forcing employees to work "off the clock," four state courts certified these suits as class actions. Not a single federal court did so, although the practice probably involves hundreds of thousands of employees nationwide."
Why would a civil rights lawyer knowingly make it harder for working-class people ( Or the people of Hunter Point suing Lennar) to have their day in court, in effect shutting off avenues of redress?
CREDIT CARD INTEREST RATES:
Obama has a way of ducking hard votes or explaining away his bad votes by trying to blame poorly-written statutes. Case in point: an amendment he voted on as part of a recent bankruptcy bill before the US Senate would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. Inexplicably, Obama voted against it, although it would have been the beginning of setting these predatory lending rates under federal control. Even Senator Hillary Clinton supported it.
Now Obama explains his vote by saying the amendment was poorly written or set the ceiling too high. His explanation isn't credible as Obama offered no lower number as an alternative, and didn't put forward his own amendment clarifying whatever language he found objectionable.
Why wouldn't Obama have voted to create the first federal ceiling on predatory credit card interest rates, particularly as he calls himself a champion of the poor and middle classes? Perhaps he was signaling to the corporate establishment that they need not fear him. For all of his dynamic rhetoric about lifting up the masses, it seems Obama has little intention of doing anything concrete to reverse the cycle of poverty many struggle to overcome.
LIMITING NON-ECONOMIC DAMAGES:
These seemingly unusual votes wherein Obama aligns himself with Republican Party interests aren't new. While in the Illinois Senate, Obama voted to limit the recovery that victims of medical malpractice could obtain through the courts. Capping non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases means a victim cannot fully recover for pain and suffering or for punitive damages. Moreover, it ignored that courts were already empowered to adjust awards when appropriate, and that the Illinois Supreme Court had previously ruled such limits on tort reform violated the state constitution.
In the US Senate, Obama continued interfering with patients' full recovery for tortious conduct. He was a sponsor of the National Medical Error Disclosure and Compensation Act of 2005. The bill requires hospitals to disclose errors to patients and has a mechanism whereby disclosure, coupled with apologies, is rewarded by limiting patients' economic recovery. Rather than simply mandating disclosure, Obama's solution is to trade what should be mandated for something that should never be given away: namely, full recovery for the injured patient.
MINING LAW OF 1872:
In November 2007, Obama came out against a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining Law of 1872. The current statute, signed into law by Ulysses Grant, allows mining companies to pay a nominal fee, as little as $2.50 an acre, to mine for hardrock minerals like gold, silver, and copper without paying royalties. Yearly profits for mining hardrock on public lands is estimated to be in excess of $1 billion a year according to Earthworks, a group that monitors the industry. Not surprisingly, the industry spends freely when it comes to lobbying: an estimated $60 million between 1998-2004 according to The Center on Public Integrity. And it appears to be paying off, yet again.
The Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2007 would have finally overhauled the law and allowed American taxpayers to reap part of the royalties (4 percent of gross revenue on existing mining operations and 8 percent on new ones). The bill provided a revenue source to cleanup abandoned hardrock mines, which is likely to cost taxpayers over $50 million, and addressed health and safety concerns in the 11 affected western states.
Later it came to light that one of Obama's key advisors in Nevada is a Nevada-based lobbyist in the employ of various mining companies (CBS News "Obama's Position On Mining Law Questioned. Democrat Shares Position with Mining Executives Who Employ Lobbyist Advising Him," November 14, 2007).
REGULATING NUCLEAR INDUSTRY:
The New York Times reported that, while campaigning in Iowa in December 2007, Obama boasted that he had passed a bill requiring nuclear plants to promptly report radioactive leaks. This came after residents of his home state of Illinois complained they were not told of leaks that occurred at a nuclear plant operated by Exelon Corporation.
The truth, however, was that Obama allowed the bill to be amended in Committee by Senate Republicans, replacing language mandating reporting with verbiage that merely offered guidance to regulators on how to address unreported leaks. The story noted that even this version of Obama's bill failed to pass the Senate, so it was unclear why Obama was claiming to have passed the legislation. The February 3, 2008 The New York Times article titled "Nuclear Leaks and Response Tested Obama in Senate" by Mike McIntire also noted the opinion of one of Obama's constituents, which was hardly enthusiastic about Obama's legislative efforts:
"Senator Obama's staff was sending us copies of the bill to review, and we could see it weakening with each successive draft," said Joe Cosgrove, a park district director in Will County, Ill., where low-level radioactive runoff had turned up in groundwater. "The teeth were just taken out of it."
As it turns out, the New York Times story noted: "Since 2003, executives and employees of Exelon, which is based in Illinois, have contributed at least $227,000 to Mr. Obama's campaigns for the United States Senate and for president. Two top Exelon officials, Frank M. Clark, executive vice president, and John W. Rogers Jr., a director, are among his largest fund-raisers."
ENERGY POLICY:
On energy policy, it turns out Obama is a big supporter of corn-based ethanol which is well known for being an energy-intensive crop to grow. It is estimated that seven barrels of oil are required to produce eight barrels of corn ethanol, according to research by the Cato Institute. Ethanol's impact on climate change is nominal and isn't "green" according to Alisa Gravitz, Co-op America executive director. "It simply isn't a major improvement over gasoline when it comes to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions." A 2006 University of Minnesota study by Jason Hill and David Tilman, and an earlier study published in BioScience in 2005, concur. (There's even concern that a reliance on corn-based ethanol would lead to higher food prices.)
So why would Obama be touting this as a solution to our oil dependency? Could it have something to do with the fact that the first presidential primary is located in Iowa, corn capital of the country? In legislative terms this means Obama voted in favor of $8 billion worth of corn subsidies in 2006 alone, when most of that money should have been committed to alternative energy sources such as solar, tidal and wind.
SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE:
Obama opposed single-payer bill HR676, sponsored by Congressmen Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers in 2006, although at least 75 members of Congress supported it. Single-payer works by trying to diminish the administrative costs that comprise somewhere around one-third of every health care dollar spent, by eliminating the duplicative nature of these services. The expected $300 billion in annual savings such a system would produce would go directly to cover the uninsured and expand coverage to those who already have insurance, according to Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.
Obama's own plan has been widely criticized for leaving health care industry administrative costs in place and for allowing millions of people to remain uninsured. "Sicko" filmmaker Michael Moore ridiculed it saying, "Obama wants the insurance companies to help us develop a new health care plan-the same companies who have created the mess in the first place."
NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT:
Regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement, Obama recently boasted, "I don't think NAFTA has been good for Americans, and I never have." Yet, Calvin Woodward reviewed Obama's record on NAFTA in a February 26, 2008 Associated Press article and found that comment to be misleading: "In his 2004 Senate campaign, Obama said the US should pursue more deals such as NAFTA, and argued more broadly that his opponent's call for tariffs would spark a trade war. AP reported then that the Illinois senator had spoken of enormous benefits having accrued to his state from NAFTA, while adding that he also called for more aggressive trade protections for US workers."
Putting aside campaign rhetoric, when actually given an opportunity to protect workers from unfair trade agreements, Obama cast the deciding vote against an amendment to a September 2005 Commerce Appropriations Bill, proposed by North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan, that would have prohibited US trade negotiators from weakening US laws that provide safeguards from unfair foreign trade practices. The bill would have been a vital tool to combat the outsourcing of jobs to foreign workers and would have ended a common corporate practice known as "pole-vaulting" over regulations, which allows companies doing foreign business to avoid "right to organize," "minimum wage," and other worker protections.
SOME FINAL EXAMPLES:
On March 2, 2007 Obama gave a speech at AIPAC, America's pro-Israeli government lobby, wherein he disavowed his previous support for the plight of the Palestinians. In what appears to be a troubling pattern, Obama told his audience what they wanted to hear. He recounted a one-sided history of the region and called for continued military support for Israel, rather than taking the opportunity to promote the various peace movements in and outside of Israel.
Why should we believe Obama has courage to bring about change? He wouldn't have his picture taken with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom when visiting San Francisco for a fundraiser in his honor because Obama was scared voters might think he supports gay marriage (Newsom acknowledged this to Reuters on January 26, 2007 and former Mayor Willie Brown admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle on February 5, 2008 that Obama told him he wanted to avoid Newsom for that reason.)
Obama acknowledges the disproportionate impact the death penalty has on blacks, but still supports it, while other politicians are fighting to stop it. (On December 17, 2007 New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine signed a bill banning the death penalty after it was passed by the New Jersey Assembly.)
On September 29, 2006, Obama joined Republicans in voting to build 700 miles of double fencing on the Mexican border (The Secure Fence Act of 2006), abandoning 19 of his colleagues who had the courage to oppose it. But now that he's campaigning in Texas and eager to win over Mexican-American voters, he says he'd employ a different border solution.
It is shocking how frequently and consistently Obama is willing to subjugate good decision making for his personal and political benefit.
Obama aggressively opposed initiating impeachment proceedings against the president ("Obama: Impeachment is not acceptable," USA Today, June 28, 2007) and he wouldn't even support Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold's effort to censure the Bush administration for illegally wiretapping American citizens in violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In Feingold's words "I'm amazed at Democrats cowering with this president's number's so low." Once again, it's troubling that Obama would take these positions and miss the opportunity to document the abuses of the Bush regime.
CONCLUSION:
Once I started looking at the votes Obama actually cast, I began to hear his rhetoric differently. The principal conclusion I draw about "change" and Barack Obama is that Obama needs to change his voting habits and stop pandering to win votes. If he does this he might someday make a decent candidate who could earn my support. For now Obama has fallen into a dangerous pattern of capitulation that he cannot reconcile with his growing popularity as an agent of change.
I remain impressed by the enthusiasm generated by Obama's style and skill as an orator. But I remain more loyal to my values, and I'm glad to say that I want no part in the Obama craze sweeping our country.
Matt Gonzalez is a former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and is running on Nader's ticket as a vice presidential candidate RENEGADE EYE
Friday, February 29, 2008
"City of Men" (Cidade Dos Homens) **
"City of Men" continues in the land where "City of God" (2002) left off, returning to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. This one is called Dead End Hill. While God focused on a photographer with a camera, Men focuses on two teens with guns.
The new movie was not created as a sequel to the 2002, or does it have the depth. It has an overlapping production crew, but it's based on a TV series. "City of God" was nominated in four Oscar categories. It exposed the political system's corruption in Brazil. The new movie shines with the cinematography and music.
The storyline is flat compared to the predecessor. The movie still shows the culture of violence based on drugs. The main characters are two older male teens. One has a child after his first time having sex, and a wife who leaves the family for a better job. His father was shot in the back. The other teen doesn't know who his father is, until he does some investigation. He finds his father was recently released from prison, following murder charges. You can see where this is going.
Some called "City of God" one of the best films in history. I agree with that assessment. "City of Men" is in a tough spot, being compared with the previous movie.
SUBTITLED
RENEGADE EYE
Monday, February 25, 2008
Serbian Bourgeoisie Raises the Level of National Hatred
By Pobunjeni um editorial board
Monday, 25 February 2008
The organizers were predicting the biggest demonstration the country has ever seen on Thursday, 21st February 2008. The government hoped that the outcry over Kosovo could mobilize more people than the events around the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s or the overthrow of Milosevic in 2000 and claim they had gathered a rally of a million. The truth is that a more modest number of around 150,000 people poured into the streets of Belgrade. Nevertheless, the ruling class successfully managed to orchestrate an artificial outburst of destructive nationalism which resulted in a zero security situation in down town Belgrade, with extreme right-oriented lumpen pillaging and plundering in what appeared to be a fascist carnival of mindless aggression.
It started with minor groups of young people gathering in the centre, waving Serbian and Chetnik flags and singing nationalistic songs. They were eventually joined by people who arrived from other Serbian cities and towns. Schools in Serbia were closed on the orders of the Minister of Education, workers were given a free afternoon and transportation was free. Tensions were already running high, since many of the participants in the rally were apparently intoxicated before the rally had even begun. The whole mass seemed as if it was going to explode at any time, and eventually it did.
The speeches from the platform were painfully conservative, invoking the myth of the Battle of Kosovo, presenting a medieval feudal battle that took place in 1389 as a national struggle for freedom of the - at the time non-existent - Serbian nation. Another thing the speakers appealed to was, once again, international bourgeois law, with much gratitude directed at the countries that are refusing to recognize Kosovo, namely Russia, Spain, South Africa, Brazil, Cuba and others...
The speakers included the most prominent Serbian far right politicians, including Tomislav Nikolić, leader of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), Velimir Ilić, a minister in the Government of Serbia, with the main figure of the rally being Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica. The main pro-Western Democratic Party officially also participated in the organization of the protest, although its leader, Borislav Tadić, suddenly found himself on a diplomatic trip at the time, thus not being able to attend. The tone of the speeches was extremely aggressive, as was the way in which the audience responded. The chauvinist slogans mentioned in the earlier article were heard once again, while the bourgeois politicians did nothing to tame those racist outbursts.
After the rally, the wave of destruction was started with attacks on foreign embassies. The mob ascended on the Turkish, US, Croatian, British, German, Slovenian, Italian, Dutch and Belgian embassies causing mayhem on the way and trying to inflict as much damage as possible on the above stated targets. After the embassies had been "dealt with", the mob went on to pillage and plunder stores and banks in down town Belgrade - leaving alone only those that showed the sign "Kosovo je Srbija" ("Kosovo is Serbia") in their windows. It was a clear statement to anyone thinking of dissent: the regime has its unofficial hound dogs willing to beat anyone into accepting the official political line. There was nothing spontaneous about the actions of the young gangs on the streets. The marked targets were left unprotected and the police greeted the protesters with sympathy intervening only where the situation was threatening to get out of control. Ordinary citizens were petrified by these fascist gangs.
Numerous attempts were made by bourgeois analysts - both, liberal and right wing - to offer some "scientific explanation", as to what had happened on that grim and surreal day in the Serbian capital. Right-wingers tried to convince everyone how the people had been provoked and urged their voters not to repeat their ravaging, since that would, they claim, "weaken our diplomatic position in the UN Security Council". None of them unambiguously condemned what was an apparent outburst of fascist reaction in the very literal sense. Instead they tried to excuse and justify it by explaining that Kosovo arouses great emotions inside every Serb and blaming the "foreign element" among the protesters.
Liberal comments, on the other hand, blamed the government for its inability to stop the violence and tried to explain this event by whining about the lack of the "rule of law", in Serbia, lack of "respect for private property", and, of course, the moral decline of the Serbian society after almost a century of life under "collectivist ideologies" of communism and nationalism. Liberal intellectuals in Belgrade are in disarray, and isolated in their foreign funded NGO's, they cry about the return of nationalism and the utterly "backward" masses that are incapable of appreciating the advantages of Euro-Atlantic integration, thus keeping the whole country hostage.
As Marxists, it is our duty to reveal the total emptiness of both of these so-called "explanations". First of all, there is no need to "understand the emotions of the Serbian people", since it was not the workers of Serbia who launched such a savage campaign that night - it was well organized elements of lumpenproletarians and underage delinquents, gathered around football supporters' clubs and neo-fascist gangs. Even the majority of those people who had been seduced, and who saw the rally as a way of expressing national grief, were far from siding with fascist ideology and acts of mindless destruction. There were, naturally a few pauperized proletarians who saw the rampaging as an opportunity to get a hold of some valuables they cannot normally afford, but the responsibility for their actions lies entirely on the shoulders of the economic system which causes their economic frustrations to surface in this manner. The argument about national emotions of the masses bursting out is therefore nothing but a shameless lie of the Serbian right.
The significant fact is that the liberal bourgeoisie also needed the very same premise, i.e. that the riots were an expression of an ethnically frustrated population angry at the world. For this they blamed "moral erosion", "lack of respect for private property" and the "absence of the state of laws". Basically, this argument can safely be interpreted as just as reactionary as the one of the far right. While the far right called its hounds "the people" and their destructive frenzy "popular discontent" in order to create an apologetic atmosphere for fascist attempts of their goons, the liberal "theoreticians" are working hard to present the masses as inherently immature and in constant need of supervision of their caretaker, the State, particularly its organs of repression. The guardianship of the bourgeoisie is therefore necessary, as is the power of tear gas and batons to protect its authority. Without it, the masses would apparently run wild and destroy all in their way, for the slightest of reasons.
Reality, however, is completely different from this mythology promoted by the ruling class! The violence that erupted was carried out by far right groups that moved in an uncharacteristically organized manner, as if it had all been well planned previously. The rally was called a "protest rally" in the bourgeois media, but it was nothing more than a gathering of aggressive support for the government! A funny kind of protest, one may note.
The aim of the rally was to endorse Serbian imperialist aspirations, embodied in its most powerful bourgeois political parties, including the darling of the western press Boris Tadić and his Democratic Party. The fact that President Tadić was not able to openly oppose the right-wing character of the protest and left the country as an alibi, speaks volumes about the insecurity and weakness of the liberal pro-western forces inside Serbia who are forced to ride the bandwagon of nationalism in order to cover themselves from the wrath of the masses brought about by their aggressive pro-capitalist economic policies. It was not the masses but precisely those bourgeois parties that worked persistently in creating an atmosphere of ethno-nationalist frenzy, which resulted in all the pillaging and plunder.
The masses, strictly speaking, showed little interest in doing anything more than express their empathy and solidarity with the Serbs of Kosovo, whose lives are endangered by the Kosovar Albanian ruling class and EU and NATO thugs that safeguard its survival in power in Kosovo. Very few would have any words excusing the latest acts of fascist barbarism.
Barbarism is the key word here! Barbarism is what capitalism always and without exception eventually produces. Its rule led to a failure that ruined millions of lives. The government of Serbia has now turned to the only thing it does well - destruction and intimidation! And in that endeavour, it was surprisingly unified, not just in its parliamentary majority but within the bourgeoisie in general. At this point in history it was necessary for them to achieve such unity of thought and action and to create a situation in which they could cause chaos and mayhem in order to present themselves as necessary to maintain order, regardless of which side of the capitalist State medallion they represent.
The weaker and more impotent a small Balkan ruling class is, the more chauvinist and poisonous its rhetoric and actions become. The Serbian ruling class cannot resolve the national question for the Serbian population in the region, nor can it improve the living conditions of the masses. Squeezed by the imperialist powers it uses the same manoeuvre the Balkan ruling classes have used throughout their existence - it bargains with, and vacillates between, the different imperialistic powers, exploiting their opposed interests.
The Belgrade riots must be seen in this key. Far from an "irrational move" of "shooting oneself in the foot" as local liberals bemoan, the burning of the US embassy and the orchestrated terror is a very pragmatic move on the part of a desperate ruling class. On the internal front, it paralyzes the independent movement of the masses with threats of the fascist mobs. In foreign policy, the "unruly chauvinist lynch mobs" serve as a negotiating card in the dealings with the West. The Serbian ruling class is urging Washington and Brussels to loosen their grip and soften their demands, unless they want to see less co-operative nationalist elements in the government. On the other hand, imperialism is also not damaged by these events. The apparent threat of Serbian chauvinism against its neighbours is used to spread fear among the working classes and youth in the region and is thus used to justify the presence of the foreign troops as the protective element.
Capitalism has pushed the Balkans back into the state of a permanent "frozen conflict" and with the perpetuating ideology of chauvinism preying in the back. The working class clearly ignored the call of the ruling class this time around; however this does not necessarily mean that nationalistic illusions have disappeared forever. After a decade of bitter experiences, the working class has become wary and passive; on the other hand the ruling class found it easier to mobilize and manipulate the youth that have grown up in the poisonous atmosphere of the 1990s. This chauvinist sentiment will never disappear by itself. The pro-European liberals are too weak, isolated, demoralised and hypocritical to change this. In this situation, the bogeyman of nationalism will keep coming back. It can only be eliminated by the movement of the working class, armed with an internationalist ideology that crosses the tight borders within the Balkans.
Events worldwide will soon reach Serbia, it is just a matter of time, and some indications of popular discontent and the need for self-organization have already become apparent. Apart from a courageous protest of the students of the University in Belgrade in 2006 and 2007, the workers are also showing encouraging early signs of organizing themselves despite the present illusions in "workers' shareholding". In the town of Zrenjanin, in the North West of Serbia, workers put their shares together and took over two of the local factories, even forming a political party named "Ravnopravnost" ("Equality") to try and take over political power on a local level. These working class militants will learn fast from their experiences. Other industrial regions will undoubtedly follow as capitalist restoration progresses and the workers are driven into political struggle by the sheer lack of alternative. In order to derail the coming class conflict, the bourgeoisie are doing the same thing their partners in other countries around the world are doing. They are calling for national unity, denying the existence of class division and conflict and, with the aid of the lumpens enlisted in their ranks, promoting barbarism so that they can later appear as the ones who can contain it using police state methods.
As Marxists we see right through their pathetic charades, and consider it our duty to expose these attempted frauds for what they are! The responsibility for the recent fascist riots lies exclusively on the shoulders of the Serbian ruling class and its spokesmen Boris Tadić, Tomislav Nikolić and Vojislav Koštunica! Order cannot be brought by those who produce chaos and deal in death and exploitation!
The "Moral decline" argument is but a childish excuse to avoid mentioning economic and cultural decline that capitalist restoration has brought with it! Capitalism cannot and will not bring order, as it has been proven in practice on numerous occasions! Only a society based on association rather than competitive hostility can bring order and prosperity; in other words, it is the workers themselves that can and must take power to manage their own affairs through a self-governed society and self-managed production! Stop global barbarism - fight for socialism!
RENEGADE EYE
Monday, 25 February 2008
The organizers were predicting the biggest demonstration the country has ever seen on Thursday, 21st February 2008. The government hoped that the outcry over Kosovo could mobilize more people than the events around the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s or the overthrow of Milosevic in 2000 and claim they had gathered a rally of a million. The truth is that a more modest number of around 150,000 people poured into the streets of Belgrade. Nevertheless, the ruling class successfully managed to orchestrate an artificial outburst of destructive nationalism which resulted in a zero security situation in down town Belgrade, with extreme right-oriented lumpen pillaging and plundering in what appeared to be a fascist carnival of mindless aggression.
It started with minor groups of young people gathering in the centre, waving Serbian and Chetnik flags and singing nationalistic songs. They were eventually joined by people who arrived from other Serbian cities and towns. Schools in Serbia were closed on the orders of the Minister of Education, workers were given a free afternoon and transportation was free. Tensions were already running high, since many of the participants in the rally were apparently intoxicated before the rally had even begun. The whole mass seemed as if it was going to explode at any time, and eventually it did.
The speeches from the platform were painfully conservative, invoking the myth of the Battle of Kosovo, presenting a medieval feudal battle that took place in 1389 as a national struggle for freedom of the - at the time non-existent - Serbian nation. Another thing the speakers appealed to was, once again, international bourgeois law, with much gratitude directed at the countries that are refusing to recognize Kosovo, namely Russia, Spain, South Africa, Brazil, Cuba and others...
The speakers included the most prominent Serbian far right politicians, including Tomislav Nikolić, leader of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), Velimir Ilić, a minister in the Government of Serbia, with the main figure of the rally being Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica. The main pro-Western Democratic Party officially also participated in the organization of the protest, although its leader, Borislav Tadić, suddenly found himself on a diplomatic trip at the time, thus not being able to attend. The tone of the speeches was extremely aggressive, as was the way in which the audience responded. The chauvinist slogans mentioned in the earlier article were heard once again, while the bourgeois politicians did nothing to tame those racist outbursts.
After the rally, the wave of destruction was started with attacks on foreign embassies. The mob ascended on the Turkish, US, Croatian, British, German, Slovenian, Italian, Dutch and Belgian embassies causing mayhem on the way and trying to inflict as much damage as possible on the above stated targets. After the embassies had been "dealt with", the mob went on to pillage and plunder stores and banks in down town Belgrade - leaving alone only those that showed the sign "Kosovo je Srbija" ("Kosovo is Serbia") in their windows. It was a clear statement to anyone thinking of dissent: the regime has its unofficial hound dogs willing to beat anyone into accepting the official political line. There was nothing spontaneous about the actions of the young gangs on the streets. The marked targets were left unprotected and the police greeted the protesters with sympathy intervening only where the situation was threatening to get out of control. Ordinary citizens were petrified by these fascist gangs.
Numerous attempts were made by bourgeois analysts - both, liberal and right wing - to offer some "scientific explanation", as to what had happened on that grim and surreal day in the Serbian capital. Right-wingers tried to convince everyone how the people had been provoked and urged their voters not to repeat their ravaging, since that would, they claim, "weaken our diplomatic position in the UN Security Council". None of them unambiguously condemned what was an apparent outburst of fascist reaction in the very literal sense. Instead they tried to excuse and justify it by explaining that Kosovo arouses great emotions inside every Serb and blaming the "foreign element" among the protesters.
Liberal comments, on the other hand, blamed the government for its inability to stop the violence and tried to explain this event by whining about the lack of the "rule of law", in Serbia, lack of "respect for private property", and, of course, the moral decline of the Serbian society after almost a century of life under "collectivist ideologies" of communism and nationalism. Liberal intellectuals in Belgrade are in disarray, and isolated in their foreign funded NGO's, they cry about the return of nationalism and the utterly "backward" masses that are incapable of appreciating the advantages of Euro-Atlantic integration, thus keeping the whole country hostage.
As Marxists, it is our duty to reveal the total emptiness of both of these so-called "explanations". First of all, there is no need to "understand the emotions of the Serbian people", since it was not the workers of Serbia who launched such a savage campaign that night - it was well organized elements of lumpenproletarians and underage delinquents, gathered around football supporters' clubs and neo-fascist gangs. Even the majority of those people who had been seduced, and who saw the rally as a way of expressing national grief, were far from siding with fascist ideology and acts of mindless destruction. There were, naturally a few pauperized proletarians who saw the rampaging as an opportunity to get a hold of some valuables they cannot normally afford, but the responsibility for their actions lies entirely on the shoulders of the economic system which causes their economic frustrations to surface in this manner. The argument about national emotions of the masses bursting out is therefore nothing but a shameless lie of the Serbian right.
The significant fact is that the liberal bourgeoisie also needed the very same premise, i.e. that the riots were an expression of an ethnically frustrated population angry at the world. For this they blamed "moral erosion", "lack of respect for private property" and the "absence of the state of laws". Basically, this argument can safely be interpreted as just as reactionary as the one of the far right. While the far right called its hounds "the people" and their destructive frenzy "popular discontent" in order to create an apologetic atmosphere for fascist attempts of their goons, the liberal "theoreticians" are working hard to present the masses as inherently immature and in constant need of supervision of their caretaker, the State, particularly its organs of repression. The guardianship of the bourgeoisie is therefore necessary, as is the power of tear gas and batons to protect its authority. Without it, the masses would apparently run wild and destroy all in their way, for the slightest of reasons.
Reality, however, is completely different from this mythology promoted by the ruling class! The violence that erupted was carried out by far right groups that moved in an uncharacteristically organized manner, as if it had all been well planned previously. The rally was called a "protest rally" in the bourgeois media, but it was nothing more than a gathering of aggressive support for the government! A funny kind of protest, one may note.
The aim of the rally was to endorse Serbian imperialist aspirations, embodied in its most powerful bourgeois political parties, including the darling of the western press Boris Tadić and his Democratic Party. The fact that President Tadić was not able to openly oppose the right-wing character of the protest and left the country as an alibi, speaks volumes about the insecurity and weakness of the liberal pro-western forces inside Serbia who are forced to ride the bandwagon of nationalism in order to cover themselves from the wrath of the masses brought about by their aggressive pro-capitalist economic policies. It was not the masses but precisely those bourgeois parties that worked persistently in creating an atmosphere of ethno-nationalist frenzy, which resulted in all the pillaging and plunder.
The masses, strictly speaking, showed little interest in doing anything more than express their empathy and solidarity with the Serbs of Kosovo, whose lives are endangered by the Kosovar Albanian ruling class and EU and NATO thugs that safeguard its survival in power in Kosovo. Very few would have any words excusing the latest acts of fascist barbarism.
Barbarism is the key word here! Barbarism is what capitalism always and without exception eventually produces. Its rule led to a failure that ruined millions of lives. The government of Serbia has now turned to the only thing it does well - destruction and intimidation! And in that endeavour, it was surprisingly unified, not just in its parliamentary majority but within the bourgeoisie in general. At this point in history it was necessary for them to achieve such unity of thought and action and to create a situation in which they could cause chaos and mayhem in order to present themselves as necessary to maintain order, regardless of which side of the capitalist State medallion they represent.
The weaker and more impotent a small Balkan ruling class is, the more chauvinist and poisonous its rhetoric and actions become. The Serbian ruling class cannot resolve the national question for the Serbian population in the region, nor can it improve the living conditions of the masses. Squeezed by the imperialist powers it uses the same manoeuvre the Balkan ruling classes have used throughout their existence - it bargains with, and vacillates between, the different imperialistic powers, exploiting their opposed interests.
The Belgrade riots must be seen in this key. Far from an "irrational move" of "shooting oneself in the foot" as local liberals bemoan, the burning of the US embassy and the orchestrated terror is a very pragmatic move on the part of a desperate ruling class. On the internal front, it paralyzes the independent movement of the masses with threats of the fascist mobs. In foreign policy, the "unruly chauvinist lynch mobs" serve as a negotiating card in the dealings with the West. The Serbian ruling class is urging Washington and Brussels to loosen their grip and soften their demands, unless they want to see less co-operative nationalist elements in the government. On the other hand, imperialism is also not damaged by these events. The apparent threat of Serbian chauvinism against its neighbours is used to spread fear among the working classes and youth in the region and is thus used to justify the presence of the foreign troops as the protective element.
Capitalism has pushed the Balkans back into the state of a permanent "frozen conflict" and with the perpetuating ideology of chauvinism preying in the back. The working class clearly ignored the call of the ruling class this time around; however this does not necessarily mean that nationalistic illusions have disappeared forever. After a decade of bitter experiences, the working class has become wary and passive; on the other hand the ruling class found it easier to mobilize and manipulate the youth that have grown up in the poisonous atmosphere of the 1990s. This chauvinist sentiment will never disappear by itself. The pro-European liberals are too weak, isolated, demoralised and hypocritical to change this. In this situation, the bogeyman of nationalism will keep coming back. It can only be eliminated by the movement of the working class, armed with an internationalist ideology that crosses the tight borders within the Balkans.
Events worldwide will soon reach Serbia, it is just a matter of time, and some indications of popular discontent and the need for self-organization have already become apparent. Apart from a courageous protest of the students of the University in Belgrade in 2006 and 2007, the workers are also showing encouraging early signs of organizing themselves despite the present illusions in "workers' shareholding". In the town of Zrenjanin, in the North West of Serbia, workers put their shares together and took over two of the local factories, even forming a political party named "Ravnopravnost" ("Equality") to try and take over political power on a local level. These working class militants will learn fast from their experiences. Other industrial regions will undoubtedly follow as capitalist restoration progresses and the workers are driven into political struggle by the sheer lack of alternative. In order to derail the coming class conflict, the bourgeoisie are doing the same thing their partners in other countries around the world are doing. They are calling for national unity, denying the existence of class division and conflict and, with the aid of the lumpens enlisted in their ranks, promoting barbarism so that they can later appear as the ones who can contain it using police state methods.
As Marxists we see right through their pathetic charades, and consider it our duty to expose these attempted frauds for what they are! The responsibility for the recent fascist riots lies exclusively on the shoulders of the Serbian ruling class and its spokesmen Boris Tadić, Tomislav Nikolić and Vojislav Koštunica! Order cannot be brought by those who produce chaos and deal in death and exploitation!
The "Moral decline" argument is but a childish excuse to avoid mentioning economic and cultural decline that capitalist restoration has brought with it! Capitalism cannot and will not bring order, as it has been proven in practice on numerous occasions! Only a society based on association rather than competitive hostility can bring order and prosperity; in other words, it is the workers themselves that can and must take power to manage their own affairs through a self-governed society and self-managed production! Stop global barbarism - fight for socialism!
RENEGADE EYE
Friday, February 22, 2008
The 80th Annual Academy Awards 2008 Open Thread
My choices are for the main categories for the February 24th awards presentation are:
Best Picture "Atonement"
Actor Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood"
Actress Marion Cotillard, "La Vie en Rose"
Supporting Actor Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men"
Supporting Actress Ruby Dee, "American Gangster"
Director Julian Schnabel, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
Foreign Didn't see any of the nominations.
Best Picture
"Atonement"
"Juno"
"Michael Clayton"
"No Country for Old Men"
"There Will Be Blood"
Actor
George Clooney, "Michael Clayton"
Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood"
Johnny Depp, "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
Tommy Lee Jones, "In the Valley of Elah"
Viggo Mortensen, "Eastern Promises"
Actress
Cate Blanchett, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"
Julie Christie, "Away From Her"
Marion Cotillard, "La Vie en Rose"
Laura Linney, "The Savages"
Ellen Page, "Juno"
Supporting Actor
Casey Affleck, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"
Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men"
Hal Holbrook, "Into the Wild"
Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Charlie Wilson's War"
Tom Wilkinson, "Michael Clayton"
Best Picture
"Atonement"
"Juno"
"Michael Clayton"
"No Country for Old Men"
"There Will Be Blood"
Actor
George Clooney, "Michael Clayton"
Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood"
Johnny Depp, "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
Tommy Lee Jones, "In the Valley of Elah"
Viggo Mortensen, "Eastern Promises"
Actress
Cate Blanchett, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"
Julie Christie, "Away From Her"
Marion Cotillard, "La Vie en Rose"
Laura Linney, "The Savages"
Ellen Page, "Juno"
Supporting Actor
Casey Affleck, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"
Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men"
Hal Holbrook, "Into the Wild"
Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Charlie Wilson's War"
Tom Wilkinson, "Michael Clayton"
Supporting Actress
Cate Blanchett, "I'm Not There"
Ruby Dee, "American Gangster"
Saoirse Ronan, "Atonement"
Amy Ryan, "Gone Baby gone"
Tilda Swinton, "Michael Clayton
Director
Julian Schnabel, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
Jason Reitman, "Juno"
Tony Gilroy, "Michael Clayton"
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, "No Country for Old Men"
Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood"
Foreign Film
"Beaufort," Israel
"The Counterfeiters," Austria
"Katyn," Poland
"Mongol," Kazakhstan
"12," Russia
Adapted Screenplay
Christopher Hampton, "Atonement"
Sarah Polley, "Away from Her"
Ronald Harwood, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, "No Country for Old Men"
Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood"
Original Screenplay
Diablo Cody, "Juno"
Nancy Oliver, "Lars and the Real Girl"
Tony Gilroy, "Michael Clayton"
Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava and Jim Capobianco, "Ratatouille"
Tamara Jenkins, "The Savages."
Animated Feature Film
"Persepolis"
"Ratatouille"
"Surf's Up"
Art Direction
"American Gangster"
"Atonement"
"The Golden Compass"
"Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
"There Will Be Blood"
Cinematography
"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"
"Atonement"
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
"No Country for Old Men"
"There Will Be Blood"
Sound Mixing
"The Bourne Ultimatum"
"No Country for Old Men"
"Ratatouille"
"3:10 to Yuma"
"Transformers"
Sound Editing
"The Bourne Ultimatum"
"No Country for Old Men"
"Ratatouille"
"There Will Be Blood"
"Transformers"
Original Score
"Atonement," Dario Marianelli
"The Kite Runner," Alberto Iglesias
"Michael Clayton," James Newton Howard
"Ratatouille," Michael Giacchino
"3:10 to Yuma," Marco Beltrami
Original Song
"Falling Slowly" from "Once," Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
"Happy Working Song" from "Enchanted," Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz
"Raise It Up" from "August Rush," Nominees to be determined
"So Close" from "Enchanted," Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz
"That's How You Know" from "Enchanted," Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz
Costume
"Across the Universe"
"Atonement"
"Elizabeth: The Golden Age"
"La Vie en Rose"
"Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
Documentary Feature
"No End in Sight"
"Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience"
"Sicko"
"Taxi to the Dark Side"
"War/Dance"
Documentary (short subject)
"Freeheld"
"La Corona (The Crown)"
"Salim Baba"
"Sari's Mother"
Film Editing
"The Bourne Ultimatum"
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
"Into the Wild"
"No Country for Old Men"
"There Will Be Blood"
Makeup
"La Vie en Rose"
"Norbit"
"Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End"
Animated Short Film
"I Met the Walrus"
"Madame Tutli-Putli"
"Meme Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)"
"My Love (Moya Lyubov)"
"Peter & the Wolf"
Live Action Short Film
"At Night"
"Il Supplente (The Substitute)"
"Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets)"
"Tanghi Argentini"
"The Tonto Woman"
Visual Effects
"The Golden Compass"
"Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End"
"Transformers"
RENEGADE EYE
Best Picture "Atonement"
Actor Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood"
Actress Marion Cotillard, "La Vie en Rose"
Supporting Actor Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men"
Supporting Actress Ruby Dee, "American Gangster"
Director Julian Schnabel, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
Foreign Didn't see any of the nominations.
Best Picture
"Atonement"
"Juno"
"Michael Clayton"
"No Country for Old Men"
"There Will Be Blood"
Actor
George Clooney, "Michael Clayton"
Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood"
Johnny Depp, "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
Tommy Lee Jones, "In the Valley of Elah"
Viggo Mortensen, "Eastern Promises"
Actress
Cate Blanchett, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"
Julie Christie, "Away From Her"
Marion Cotillard, "La Vie en Rose"
Laura Linney, "The Savages"
Ellen Page, "Juno"
Supporting Actor
Casey Affleck, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"
Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men"
Hal Holbrook, "Into the Wild"
Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Charlie Wilson's War"
Tom Wilkinson, "Michael Clayton"
Best Picture
"Atonement"
"Juno"
"Michael Clayton"
"No Country for Old Men"
"There Will Be Blood"
Actor
George Clooney, "Michael Clayton"
Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood"
Johnny Depp, "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
Tommy Lee Jones, "In the Valley of Elah"
Viggo Mortensen, "Eastern Promises"
Actress
Cate Blanchett, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"
Julie Christie, "Away From Her"
Marion Cotillard, "La Vie en Rose"
Laura Linney, "The Savages"
Ellen Page, "Juno"
Supporting Actor
Casey Affleck, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"
Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men"
Hal Holbrook, "Into the Wild"
Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Charlie Wilson's War"
Tom Wilkinson, "Michael Clayton"
Supporting Actress
Cate Blanchett, "I'm Not There"
Ruby Dee, "American Gangster"
Saoirse Ronan, "Atonement"
Amy Ryan, "Gone Baby gone"
Tilda Swinton, "Michael Clayton
Director
Julian Schnabel, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
Jason Reitman, "Juno"
Tony Gilroy, "Michael Clayton"
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, "No Country for Old Men"
Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood"
Foreign Film
"Beaufort," Israel
"The Counterfeiters," Austria
"Katyn," Poland
"Mongol," Kazakhstan
"12," Russia
Adapted Screenplay
Christopher Hampton, "Atonement"
Sarah Polley, "Away from Her"
Ronald Harwood, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, "No Country for Old Men"
Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood"
Original Screenplay
Diablo Cody, "Juno"
Nancy Oliver, "Lars and the Real Girl"
Tony Gilroy, "Michael Clayton"
Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava and Jim Capobianco, "Ratatouille"
Tamara Jenkins, "The Savages."
Animated Feature Film
"Persepolis"
"Ratatouille"
"Surf's Up"
Art Direction
"American Gangster"
"Atonement"
"The Golden Compass"
"Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
"There Will Be Blood"
Cinematography
"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"
"Atonement"
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
"No Country for Old Men"
"There Will Be Blood"
Sound Mixing
"The Bourne Ultimatum"
"No Country for Old Men"
"Ratatouille"
"3:10 to Yuma"
"Transformers"
Sound Editing
"The Bourne Ultimatum"
"No Country for Old Men"
"Ratatouille"
"There Will Be Blood"
"Transformers"
Original Score
"Atonement," Dario Marianelli
"The Kite Runner," Alberto Iglesias
"Michael Clayton," James Newton Howard
"Ratatouille," Michael Giacchino
"3:10 to Yuma," Marco Beltrami
Original Song
"Falling Slowly" from "Once," Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
"Happy Working Song" from "Enchanted," Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz
"Raise It Up" from "August Rush," Nominees to be determined
"So Close" from "Enchanted," Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz
"That's How You Know" from "Enchanted," Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz
Costume
"Across the Universe"
"Atonement"
"Elizabeth: The Golden Age"
"La Vie en Rose"
"Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
Documentary Feature
"No End in Sight"
"Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience"
"Sicko"
"Taxi to the Dark Side"
"War/Dance"
Documentary (short subject)
"Freeheld"
"La Corona (The Crown)"
"Salim Baba"
"Sari's Mother"
Film Editing
"The Bourne Ultimatum"
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
"Into the Wild"
"No Country for Old Men"
"There Will Be Blood"
Makeup
"La Vie en Rose"
"Norbit"
"Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End"
Animated Short Film
"I Met the Walrus"
"Madame Tutli-Putli"
"Meme Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)"
"My Love (Moya Lyubov)"
"Peter & the Wolf"
Live Action Short Film
"At Night"
"Il Supplente (The Substitute)"
"Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets)"
"Tanghi Argentini"
"The Tonto Woman"
Visual Effects
"The Golden Compass"
"Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End"
"Transformers"
RENEGADE EYE
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Open Thread: The Pakistan Elections 2008
February 18th is the date set for the General Elections in Pakistan. It is also the date when politics in Pakistan will enter a new epoch, the epoch when masses will come out to challenge the class that has oppressed and tyrannized them for generations.
The campaign of the largest party of Pakistan, the party that is supported by the downtrodden and exploited working class, the Pakistan People's Party, is in full swing and is reaching new heights never seen before.
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto on 27th December 2007 and the events that followed have sparked a new wave of revolutionary enthusiasm and awakening of the masses. The public meetings of the PPP are attracting the masses in their hundreds of thousands. Every street and road echoes with the slogan of Jiye Bhutto! (Long Live Bhutto!). The tricolour flag of the PPP adorns most of the streets and roads throughout the whole country. The revolutionary election campaign of the Marxists is also having an impact and posing a challenge to the capitalist class.RENEGADE EYE
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
The Infamous Louis Proyect Review of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
This is the initial review written by Louis Proyect, of "No Country For Old Men," that sparked controversy throughout the web. Since writing this there has been a follow-up.
I will be having an open thread on Oscar night.
Did you read what that idiot Proyect wrote about “No Country for Old Men”?
By Louis Proyect
November 19, 2007
“No Country for Old Men,” the Coen brother’s latest film, has received 89 favorable reviews out of 90 on rottentomatoes.com where my review will now join the other distaff take.
Many critics describe it as a return to the halcyon days of “Fargo” and they are partially correct. Like “Fargo,” “No Country for Old Men” exploits local color–in this case the laconic twang of West Texas. Unlike “Fargo”–unfortunately–the movie is structurally flawed with an ending that makes the final episode of “The Sopranos” look like a textbook example of dramatic conclusion.
Defying the normal audience’s appetite for a meaningful resolution, “No Country for Old Men” ends with a whimper rather than a bang. To a certain extent, this is necessitated by the plot of the Cormac McCarthy novel, about whose work I will have more to say. I am going to reveal the conclusion of the movie momentarily so those that plan to spend ten dollars or more to be ultimately disappointed should read no further.
There are three major characters in “No Country.” In the opening scene we are introduced to Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin in an impressive performance), a Vietnam veteran who is hunting antelope in the arid backcountry where much of the action takes place. He happens upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone bust, with dead or dying Mexicans lying on the ground next to their all-terrain pickup trucks equipped with high-power spotlights. After Moss notices a briefcase containing two million dollars, he absconds with it in a gesture highly reminiscent of the characters in the 1998 “A Simple Plan,” a much more successful essay on the moral and physical hazards of appropriating ill-gotten gains.
Hired to track down the cash is one Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a hit-man who lugs around a pneumatic stun-gun with a captive bolt that is ordinarily used for killing cattle. Chiguhr uses his to knock out the locks on doors behind which reside his intended victims or to knock out their brains slaughterhouse-style. Of indeterminate nationality, Chigurh is occasionally inspired to play with his intended victims, allowing them to toss a coin to decide their fate. His character is a mixture of a less interesting version of the Samuel Jackson hit-man in “Pulp Fiction” and the very first Terminator–the unrelenting evil one. Entirely missing is the kind of bent humor found in the kidnappers in “Fargo,” who despite being creeps were a source of amusement.
The third major character is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, played by Tommie Lee Jones. Naming the character Ed Tom is a demonstration of Cormac McCarthy’s resolve to make his characters authentically “good old boy.” He is the counterpart of the female cop lead character in “Fargo.” Unlike her, Sheriff Bell never really gets involved in apprehending Chigurh or any other bad guys. His main purpose is to serve as an outlet for McCarthy’s cracker-barrel philosophy–a mixture of Reagan-era conservatism and nihilism. At one point, Bell tells a colleague that everything started going downhill when young people began to dye their hair green and put spikes through their noses.
The movie actually moves along quite nicely until the final fifteen minutes or so. It consists almost entirely of Chigurh trying to track down and kill Llewelyn Moss in a manner that evokes all of the Terminator flicks. This pursuer is made out of flesh-and-blood, however. After Moss blasts him with a shotgun, Chigurh retreats to a seedy motel (”No Country” is replete with some of the scuzziest motels and hotels ever seen in a film) and performs surgery to remove the shotgun pellets from his knee. With the Terminator flicks floating in the back of my mind, I almost expected to see metal rods instead of bones beneath his flesh.
Up to this point, you are expecting a grand finale with the three major characters shooting it out. You hope for Llewelyn Moss to come out on top, since his character is especially engaging and resourceful. For example, he is adept at hiding the loot in the ventilation system of one run-down motel. I kept expecting something like the conclusion to the wonderful 1972 Sam Peckinpah movie “The Getaway” based on a Jim Thompson novel. Like “No Country,” “The Getaway” involves likable people (Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw) trying to elude hit-men hired to retrieve ill-gotten gains. It also includes some truly low-class motels and hotels.
However, McCarthy–in keeping with his nihilistic view of the universe–has Moss killed off before such a climax can even take place. Perhaps in an attempt to one-up McCarthy on anti-climaticism, the Coen brothers have him killed off-screen. Once he is gone, you really lose interest in the film entirely. Or at least I did, based on my take on the film compared to other critics on rottentomatoes.com. I can say that my wife had the same exact reaction. When we spotted Moss’s dead body, we turned to each other with a look of consternation as if to say, “What the fuck was that about?” When we returned home after the movie, I told her that our common reaction to the film reflected the strength of our marriage. If she had told me that this was the greatest movie she had seen all year, I probably would have filed for divorce.
In pouring through the mainstream media trying to find a review that jibed with my own, I could only turn up one. Writing in the Washington Post on November 9th, Stephen Hunter opined:
Derived from the hyper-violent Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, it’s a high-end “literary” thriller that traffics as much in ideas as in thrills, sometimes to its own detriment. It follows as a Vietnam vet (the time is the ’80s) antelope hunting comes across a Texas drug deal gone bad. Bodies, guns, blood, flies and folly are everywhere on the arid plains. He finds a huge chunk of money and makes off with it; alas, having promised a dying man a drink of water, he heads back, scotching his successful getaway. He is observed by other drug smugglers, and the chase begins.
You can’t say it cuts to the chase. There was never anything to cut from to the chase. It’s all chase, which means that it offers almost zero in character development. Each figure is given, a la standard thriller operating procedure, a single moral or psychological attribute and then acts in accordance to that principle and nothing else, without doubts, contradictions or ambivalence. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin; see story on Page 33), the laconic vet who finds the stash, is pure Stubbornness. His main pursuer, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem in Robert Wagner’s haircut from “Prince Valiant”), is Death, without a pale horse. Subsidiary chaser Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) is Pride, or possibly Folly. Tommy Lee Jones appears in the role of Melancholy Wisdom; he’s a lawman also trying to find Llewelyn but not very hard. He’d much rather address the camera and soliloquize on the sorry state of affairs of mankind, though if he says anything memorable, I missed it.
Despite his reputation as being some kind of latter-day Faulker, I have a sneaking suspicion that McCarthy is an elevated version of Jim Thompson, or some other pulp fiction writer. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem capable of writing a satisfying conclusion to a novel as the best mass market writers know how to do. One suspects that this is simply a function of a worldview that amounts to a redneck dystopia.
If I had more time on my hands, I might take a look at McCarthy’s novels to try to extract out the rotten core and examine it under a strong light, especially the 1985 “Blood Meridian” that is described on the official website of the Cormac McCarthy Society as a dismantling of “the politically correct myth of aboriginal victimization, so that victims and their antagonists become indistinguishable.” The write-up continues:
In one celebrated scene, a column of mercenaries the kid has joined encounters a Comanche war party herding stolen horses and cattle across the desert. The kid barely escapes as the Indians, still vividly dressed like eldritch clowns in the garments they have stripped from their last white victims, annihilate his companions.
Just what the world was waiting for, a Faulkneresque novel that depicts American Indians as wanton killers.Louis Proyect
I will be having an open thread on Oscar night.
By Louis Proyect
November 19, 2007
“No Country for Old Men,” the Coen brother’s latest film, has received 89 favorable reviews out of 90 on rottentomatoes.com where my review will now join the other distaff take.
Many critics describe it as a return to the halcyon days of “Fargo” and they are partially correct. Like “Fargo,” “No Country for Old Men” exploits local color–in this case the laconic twang of West Texas. Unlike “Fargo”–unfortunately–the movie is structurally flawed with an ending that makes the final episode of “The Sopranos” look like a textbook example of dramatic conclusion.
Defying the normal audience’s appetite for a meaningful resolution, “No Country for Old Men” ends with a whimper rather than a bang. To a certain extent, this is necessitated by the plot of the Cormac McCarthy novel, about whose work I will have more to say. I am going to reveal the conclusion of the movie momentarily so those that plan to spend ten dollars or more to be ultimately disappointed should read no further.
There are three major characters in “No Country.” In the opening scene we are introduced to Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin in an impressive performance), a Vietnam veteran who is hunting antelope in the arid backcountry where much of the action takes place. He happens upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone bust, with dead or dying Mexicans lying on the ground next to their all-terrain pickup trucks equipped with high-power spotlights. After Moss notices a briefcase containing two million dollars, he absconds with it in a gesture highly reminiscent of the characters in the 1998 “A Simple Plan,” a much more successful essay on the moral and physical hazards of appropriating ill-gotten gains.
Hired to track down the cash is one Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a hit-man who lugs around a pneumatic stun-gun with a captive bolt that is ordinarily used for killing cattle. Chiguhr uses his to knock out the locks on doors behind which reside his intended victims or to knock out their brains slaughterhouse-style. Of indeterminate nationality, Chigurh is occasionally inspired to play with his intended victims, allowing them to toss a coin to decide their fate. His character is a mixture of a less interesting version of the Samuel Jackson hit-man in “Pulp Fiction” and the very first Terminator–the unrelenting evil one. Entirely missing is the kind of bent humor found in the kidnappers in “Fargo,” who despite being creeps were a source of amusement.
The third major character is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, played by Tommie Lee Jones. Naming the character Ed Tom is a demonstration of Cormac McCarthy’s resolve to make his characters authentically “good old boy.” He is the counterpart of the female cop lead character in “Fargo.” Unlike her, Sheriff Bell never really gets involved in apprehending Chigurh or any other bad guys. His main purpose is to serve as an outlet for McCarthy’s cracker-barrel philosophy–a mixture of Reagan-era conservatism and nihilism. At one point, Bell tells a colleague that everything started going downhill when young people began to dye their hair green and put spikes through their noses.
The movie actually moves along quite nicely until the final fifteen minutes or so. It consists almost entirely of Chigurh trying to track down and kill Llewelyn Moss in a manner that evokes all of the Terminator flicks. This pursuer is made out of flesh-and-blood, however. After Moss blasts him with a shotgun, Chigurh retreats to a seedy motel (”No Country” is replete with some of the scuzziest motels and hotels ever seen in a film) and performs surgery to remove the shotgun pellets from his knee. With the Terminator flicks floating in the back of my mind, I almost expected to see metal rods instead of bones beneath his flesh.
Up to this point, you are expecting a grand finale with the three major characters shooting it out. You hope for Llewelyn Moss to come out on top, since his character is especially engaging and resourceful. For example, he is adept at hiding the loot in the ventilation system of one run-down motel. I kept expecting something like the conclusion to the wonderful 1972 Sam Peckinpah movie “The Getaway” based on a Jim Thompson novel. Like “No Country,” “The Getaway” involves likable people (Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw) trying to elude hit-men hired to retrieve ill-gotten gains. It also includes some truly low-class motels and hotels.
However, McCarthy–in keeping with his nihilistic view of the universe–has Moss killed off before such a climax can even take place. Perhaps in an attempt to one-up McCarthy on anti-climaticism, the Coen brothers have him killed off-screen. Once he is gone, you really lose interest in the film entirely. Or at least I did, based on my take on the film compared to other critics on rottentomatoes.com. I can say that my wife had the same exact reaction. When we spotted Moss’s dead body, we turned to each other with a look of consternation as if to say, “What the fuck was that about?” When we returned home after the movie, I told her that our common reaction to the film reflected the strength of our marriage. If she had told me that this was the greatest movie she had seen all year, I probably would have filed for divorce.
In pouring through the mainstream media trying to find a review that jibed with my own, I could only turn up one. Writing in the Washington Post on November 9th, Stephen Hunter opined:
Derived from the hyper-violent Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, it’s a high-end “literary” thriller that traffics as much in ideas as in thrills, sometimes to its own detriment. It follows as a Vietnam vet (the time is the ’80s) antelope hunting comes across a Texas drug deal gone bad. Bodies, guns, blood, flies and folly are everywhere on the arid plains. He finds a huge chunk of money and makes off with it; alas, having promised a dying man a drink of water, he heads back, scotching his successful getaway. He is observed by other drug smugglers, and the chase begins.
You can’t say it cuts to the chase. There was never anything to cut from to the chase. It’s all chase, which means that it offers almost zero in character development. Each figure is given, a la standard thriller operating procedure, a single moral or psychological attribute and then acts in accordance to that principle and nothing else, without doubts, contradictions or ambivalence. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin; see story on Page 33), the laconic vet who finds the stash, is pure Stubbornness. His main pursuer, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem in Robert Wagner’s haircut from “Prince Valiant”), is Death, without a pale horse. Subsidiary chaser Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) is Pride, or possibly Folly. Tommy Lee Jones appears in the role of Melancholy Wisdom; he’s a lawman also trying to find Llewelyn but not very hard. He’d much rather address the camera and soliloquize on the sorry state of affairs of mankind, though if he says anything memorable, I missed it.
Despite his reputation as being some kind of latter-day Faulker, I have a sneaking suspicion that McCarthy is an elevated version of Jim Thompson, or some other pulp fiction writer. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem capable of writing a satisfying conclusion to a novel as the best mass market writers know how to do. One suspects that this is simply a function of a worldview that amounts to a redneck dystopia.
If I had more time on my hands, I might take a look at McCarthy’s novels to try to extract out the rotten core and examine it under a strong light, especially the 1985 “Blood Meridian” that is described on the official website of the Cormac McCarthy Society as a dismantling of “the politically correct myth of aboriginal victimization, so that victims and their antagonists become indistinguishable.” The write-up continues:
In one celebrated scene, a column of mercenaries the kid has joined encounters a Comanche war party herding stolen horses and cattle across the desert. The kid barely escapes as the Indians, still vividly dressed like eldritch clowns in the garments they have stripped from their last white victims, annihilate his companions.
Just what the world was waiting for, a Faulkneresque novel that depicts American Indians as wanton killers.Louis Proyect
Friday, February 08, 2008
Pakistan Elections: Reactionary MQM Preparing for Massive Rigging in Karachi
I will be having an open thread during the important elections this month in Pakistan.
By Adam Pal
Friday, 08 February 2008
The election campaign in Karachi has gained momentum once again after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Karachi is the main industrial city of Pakistan with a huge proletariat. Workers from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds have migrated to the city over a period of decades. In order to break the unity of workers along ethnic and national lines, state sponsored organisations are also working in full swing.
The 18th February elections are an opportunity for the masses to express their anger and wrath against the ruling classes. Their deteriorating standard of living and miserable living conditions have once again pushed them towards the Pakistan People's Party, which they see as the party that was formed out of the 1968 revolutionary mass movement. The People's Party, in spite of what its leadership has done at different times in its history, is considered as a party of the masses and the workers. Because of this it has always been seen as a thorn in the side of the ruling classes.
The new tide of the masses towards the PPP, especially after the assassination of Benazir, has once again disturbed the agenda of the capitalists and landlords. In Karachi the state sponsored reactionary MQM has used terrorist and fascist methods to divide the working class and harass and besiege them. Their method has always been to try to keep the masses away from the political process and confine them within their homes and workplace.
However, now the people are fed up with these fascist methods and refuse to be kept as hostage in their own homes. The PPP is tipped to win the elections with big margins and this is giving sleepless nights to these fascist elements. In an attempt to stop this rising tide of the masses around the PPP they are employing new and modern tactics of rigging the elections.
In the past they killed many of their opposing candidates and their supporters. This time they have the added advantage that the Sindh regional government and city administration of Karachi are in their full control. All the law enforcement agencies are under their control and they have also a tamed judiciary which is working according to their whims.
Hundreds of PPP activists have already been booked under false charges of terrorist activities and are being held in jail. Their families along with the candidates are harassed by the Anti-terrorism court despite campaigning for the elections. This is only one of several methods employed to disturb the campaign of the PPP.
A big plan has been prepared for Election Day on 18th February 2008. Special arrangements are being set up for NA-257 Karachi. This was once considered a safe MQM seat. However, after a revolutionary Marxist campaign led by comrade Riaz Hussain Lund Baloch in this area, these fascist elements now fear defeat.
Special instructions have been issued by the governor of Sindh and by the city administrator to use all methods to stop the Marxists from winning this seat. In the past elections MQM always won by harassing and terrorizing their opponents. In NA-257, which constitutes part of Malir District and East District, people still remember the past elections with fear and terror.
In 2004 Abdullah Murad Baloch, who was a member of the Sindh Assembly for this area was assassinated. After his assassination by-elections were held in his seat and the MQM candidate won by blatant rigging.
That by-election was a tale of fascist activity at its peak. Big numbers of armed MQM thugs entered the polling stations at a specific time on Election Day and opened fire inside the station. The polling agents of the PPP were taken hostage and locked up in toilets and other rooms. Then these hoodlums seized the official stamps and started stamping the ballot papers unhindered.
The police and paramilitary forces were mere spectators while this rigging was going on. Armed men of the MQM also stood between the polling staff and the ballot box and when someone entered to stamp the ballot paper they snatched it and asked the person to go home saying that they would stamp it themselves.
This time as the local government is under their control, they have printed additional ballot papers for NA-257 to give them to their activists. This time ballot boxes could also be replaced inside the police vans as they are transported away after the balloting on Election Day.
If one looks at the election results of the by-elections in 2004 one would be surprised to see that MQM candidate got 100 percent of the votes in some specific polling stations which would be unique in the world. This clearly indicates that those elections were rigged.
The revolutionary campaign of the Marxists in NA-257 has mobilized the masses and they are now preparing to come out in big numbers on Election Day as their real guarantee of security.
These fascist elements are trying every means possible to harass the people including bomb blasts and target killings and they will step up their campaign of sabotaging the elections in the coming days. More bomb blasts and target killings can be expected in NA-257 before the elections.
The MQM is also pressurizing the Electoral Commission and Returning Officer who will announce the result. It is also possible that despite getting a majority of votes on Election Day, the PPP candidate could lose his seat. These reactionaries can force the Electoral Commission to announce the result in their favour. The only legal method to challenge this is through the courts where the appeals of 2002 elections are still pending!
All this fear, terror and oppression are unable to weaken the revolutionary commitment of the masses that are now treading the path of revolutionary politics. This time they have vowed to take revenge for all the tears and bloodshed. The stakes are high and the goal is socialism.RENEGADE EYE
By Adam Pal
Friday, 08 February 2008
The election campaign in Karachi has gained momentum once again after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Karachi is the main industrial city of Pakistan with a huge proletariat. Workers from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds have migrated to the city over a period of decades. In order to break the unity of workers along ethnic and national lines, state sponsored organisations are also working in full swing.
The 18th February elections are an opportunity for the masses to express their anger and wrath against the ruling classes. Their deteriorating standard of living and miserable living conditions have once again pushed them towards the Pakistan People's Party, which they see as the party that was formed out of the 1968 revolutionary mass movement. The People's Party, in spite of what its leadership has done at different times in its history, is considered as a party of the masses and the workers. Because of this it has always been seen as a thorn in the side of the ruling classes.
The new tide of the masses towards the PPP, especially after the assassination of Benazir, has once again disturbed the agenda of the capitalists and landlords. In Karachi the state sponsored reactionary MQM has used terrorist and fascist methods to divide the working class and harass and besiege them. Their method has always been to try to keep the masses away from the political process and confine them within their homes and workplace.
However, now the people are fed up with these fascist methods and refuse to be kept as hostage in their own homes. The PPP is tipped to win the elections with big margins and this is giving sleepless nights to these fascist elements. In an attempt to stop this rising tide of the masses around the PPP they are employing new and modern tactics of rigging the elections.
In the past they killed many of their opposing candidates and their supporters. This time they have the added advantage that the Sindh regional government and city administration of Karachi are in their full control. All the law enforcement agencies are under their control and they have also a tamed judiciary which is working according to their whims.
Hundreds of PPP activists have already been booked under false charges of terrorist activities and are being held in jail. Their families along with the candidates are harassed by the Anti-terrorism court despite campaigning for the elections. This is only one of several methods employed to disturb the campaign of the PPP.
A big plan has been prepared for Election Day on 18th February 2008. Special arrangements are being set up for NA-257 Karachi. This was once considered a safe MQM seat. However, after a revolutionary Marxist campaign led by comrade Riaz Hussain Lund Baloch in this area, these fascist elements now fear defeat.
Special instructions have been issued by the governor of Sindh and by the city administrator to use all methods to stop the Marxists from winning this seat. In the past elections MQM always won by harassing and terrorizing their opponents. In NA-257, which constitutes part of Malir District and East District, people still remember the past elections with fear and terror.
In 2004 Abdullah Murad Baloch, who was a member of the Sindh Assembly for this area was assassinated. After his assassination by-elections were held in his seat and the MQM candidate won by blatant rigging.
That by-election was a tale of fascist activity at its peak. Big numbers of armed MQM thugs entered the polling stations at a specific time on Election Day and opened fire inside the station. The polling agents of the PPP were taken hostage and locked up in toilets and other rooms. Then these hoodlums seized the official stamps and started stamping the ballot papers unhindered.
The police and paramilitary forces were mere spectators while this rigging was going on. Armed men of the MQM also stood between the polling staff and the ballot box and when someone entered to stamp the ballot paper they snatched it and asked the person to go home saying that they would stamp it themselves.
This time as the local government is under their control, they have printed additional ballot papers for NA-257 to give them to their activists. This time ballot boxes could also be replaced inside the police vans as they are transported away after the balloting on Election Day.
If one looks at the election results of the by-elections in 2004 one would be surprised to see that MQM candidate got 100 percent of the votes in some specific polling stations which would be unique in the world. This clearly indicates that those elections were rigged.
The revolutionary campaign of the Marxists in NA-257 has mobilized the masses and they are now preparing to come out in big numbers on Election Day as their real guarantee of security.
These fascist elements are trying every means possible to harass the people including bomb blasts and target killings and they will step up their campaign of sabotaging the elections in the coming days. More bomb blasts and target killings can be expected in NA-257 before the elections.
The MQM is also pressurizing the Electoral Commission and Returning Officer who will announce the result. It is also possible that despite getting a majority of votes on Election Day, the PPP candidate could lose his seat. These reactionaries can force the Electoral Commission to announce the result in their favour. The only legal method to challenge this is through the courts where the appeals of 2002 elections are still pending!
All this fear, terror and oppression are unable to weaken the revolutionary commitment of the masses that are now treading the path of revolutionary politics. This time they have vowed to take revenge for all the tears and bloodshed. The stakes are high and the goal is socialism.RENEGADE EYE
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Kenya: What Is To Be Done?
Journalist David Osler at his blog Dave's Part, presented a post that I think can be a good basis for a discussion about Kenya's latest events. According to Marxist Alan Woods,"Just look at Kenya - it was supposed to be a success story, carried out market reforms, privatisations, etc., it was considered a shining example of democracy. Now we see the opposite: barbarism, elements of social disintegration - as a result of all of that. It is easy to play up the elements of barbarism - we can see them even in advanced countries of Europe: crime, drugs, murder, collapse of morale in society. How can we expect anything else of a system in decline? As Lenin said: capitalism is horror without end.
The death toll in the disturbances in Kenya over the last month is now approaching 900, and appears to be escalating. Is there anything the rest of the world could – or should – do in an effort to put a stop to the violence? Is there anything the left can independently say?
Obviously, the answer to that question depends entirely on how one assesses the situation. Jendayi Frazer - US assistant secretary of state for African affairs – yesterday described what is going on as ‘clearly ethnic cleansing’, but was careful to add that she ‘does not consider it genocide’.
That evaluation seems to me – sitting here in London, with no special knowledge of the country beyond a visit on journalistic assignment a few years back - essentially incontestable.
Although there is a worrying tribal dimension to the killings, the scale of brutality does not seem commensurate with the portentous designation ‘genocide’, in the generally accepted sense of the word. This isn’t a re-run of the killing fields, at least not as things stand.
But saying that leaves open the issue of exactly where the threshold should be placed. Would 10,000 murders suffice? If not, 100,000? More still? Can we work on the basis of some hitherto unspecified percentage of a given ethnic group? Does 50% plus one count as genocide, but not 50% minus one?
It is impossible to answer that question, although one is reminded of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous definition of hard-core pornography: 'I know it when I see it.’
Naturally, Ms Fraser chose her words extremely carefully; after all, 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which theoretically imposes on the UN an obligation to prevent genocide. I say theoretically, because in six decades, it is arguable that the UN has not acted to stop a single instance of this most horrendous of crimes.
Some regional rulers are urging drastic action. Paul Kagame, president of neighbouring Rwanda, has openly called for a pre-emptive military takeover:
"It might not be fashionable and right for the armies to get involved in such a political situation. But in situations where institutions have lost control, I wouldn't mind such a solution," he said in an interview in Kigali with Reuters on the eve of an African Union summit in Addis Ababa.
That’s not an idea any democrat could find remotely desirable, of course. In any case, it is simply not a runner, as the Financial Times points out:
Kenya is one of only a handful of sub-Saharan African countries never to have experienced a military coup.
The make-up of the army reflects some of the same divisions within Kenyan society exposed by the post election crisis. Many of the ground troops are from poorer ethnic groups sympathetic to Raila Odinga, the opposition leader who believes he was robbed of election victory. More of the officer class have been appointed from Mr Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe.
Kenyans familiar with the army say senior commanders have been reluctant to allow the deployment of troops for fear they could splinter along ethnic lines.
Kagame speaks, of course, as the head of a country where long extant tribal tensions spun out of control, setting off the chain of events that led to the massacre of 800,000 people in the madness of 1994. That stands as a warning of what could yet happen in Kenya.
Yet the solutions that socialists normally advocate seem just as inoperative as his demand for the army to step in. I don’t doubt that some far left websites will issue rousing calls for the Kenyan working class to seize state power; but in a country where organised labour is as divided on tribal lines as any other institution, even such abstract propaganda is liable to be misread in tribal terms.
All the international left can do is watch matters play out, in the hope that two sets of corrupt and business-oriented bourgeois politicians defuse the brutality before a bloody endgame is reached. It is hardly an encouraging prospect. RENEGADE EYE
The death toll in the disturbances in Kenya over the last month is now approaching 900, and appears to be escalating. Is there anything the rest of the world could – or should – do in an effort to put a stop to the violence? Is there anything the left can independently say?
Obviously, the answer to that question depends entirely on how one assesses the situation. Jendayi Frazer - US assistant secretary of state for African affairs – yesterday described what is going on as ‘clearly ethnic cleansing’, but was careful to add that she ‘does not consider it genocide’.
That evaluation seems to me – sitting here in London, with no special knowledge of the country beyond a visit on journalistic assignment a few years back - essentially incontestable.
Although there is a worrying tribal dimension to the killings, the scale of brutality does not seem commensurate with the portentous designation ‘genocide’, in the generally accepted sense of the word. This isn’t a re-run of the killing fields, at least not as things stand.
But saying that leaves open the issue of exactly where the threshold should be placed. Would 10,000 murders suffice? If not, 100,000? More still? Can we work on the basis of some hitherto unspecified percentage of a given ethnic group? Does 50% plus one count as genocide, but not 50% minus one?
It is impossible to answer that question, although one is reminded of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous definition of hard-core pornography: 'I know it when I see it.’
Naturally, Ms Fraser chose her words extremely carefully; after all, 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which theoretically imposes on the UN an obligation to prevent genocide. I say theoretically, because in six decades, it is arguable that the UN has not acted to stop a single instance of this most horrendous of crimes.
Some regional rulers are urging drastic action. Paul Kagame, president of neighbouring Rwanda, has openly called for a pre-emptive military takeover:
"It might not be fashionable and right for the armies to get involved in such a political situation. But in situations where institutions have lost control, I wouldn't mind such a solution," he said in an interview in Kigali with Reuters on the eve of an African Union summit in Addis Ababa.
That’s not an idea any democrat could find remotely desirable, of course. In any case, it is simply not a runner, as the Financial Times points out:
Kenya is one of only a handful of sub-Saharan African countries never to have experienced a military coup.
The make-up of the army reflects some of the same divisions within Kenyan society exposed by the post election crisis. Many of the ground troops are from poorer ethnic groups sympathetic to Raila Odinga, the opposition leader who believes he was robbed of election victory. More of the officer class have been appointed from Mr Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe.
Kenyans familiar with the army say senior commanders have been reluctant to allow the deployment of troops for fear they could splinter along ethnic lines.
Kagame speaks, of course, as the head of a country where long extant tribal tensions spun out of control, setting off the chain of events that led to the massacre of 800,000 people in the madness of 1994. That stands as a warning of what could yet happen in Kenya.
Yet the solutions that socialists normally advocate seem just as inoperative as his demand for the army to step in. I don’t doubt that some far left websites will issue rousing calls for the Kenyan working class to seize state power; but in a country where organised labour is as divided on tribal lines as any other institution, even such abstract propaganda is liable to be misread in tribal terms.
All the international left can do is watch matters play out, in the hope that two sets of corrupt and business-oriented bourgeois politicians defuse the brutality before a bloody endgame is reached. It is hardly an encouraging prospect. RENEGADE EYE
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