DiMaggio: who needs mass action when you have Obama, aka, "the one."

World in Revolt: The Global Backlash Against Budget Cuts

Sunday 26 September 2010

by: Anthony DiMaggio, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/world-revolt-the-global-backlash-against-budget-cuts63465

Americans should take a page from activists throughout the rest of the world if they're seriously interested in resisting the massive budget cuts afflicting this country. Effective social change only comes about through mass action - a lesson that has emerged after years of grassroots uprisings in the U.S. and throughout the world.
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The U.K. is characterized in many ways by a relatively stronger social welfare state (especially in relation to health care) than that seen in the U.S., and less extreme conditions for workers, with 7.8 percent unemployment compared to the United States' 9.6 percent official unemployment. Yet, British public sector workers are far more organized and intolerant of the gutting of public education. France has a similar level of unemployment to the U.S. at 10 percent and a far more advanced social welfare state, yet its workers have responded with a coordinated national campaign to protest budget cuts. In contrast, American protests against far larger austerity measures (in the form of mass layoffs and talk of serious pension cuts) are being met by scattered local protests at best. No salient national campaign is emerging across localities in this country, nor does it appear that one is on the horizon in the near future. ...

A major cause of U.S. apathy is likely the depoliticization of the American electorate and the lack of a collective working class consciousness. A majority of Americans distrust their political officials, while a growing number feel that they cannot rely upon the national government to improve their living standards. This latter trend should be particularly disturbing for those on the left who see the national government as the primary medium for promoting the improvement of living standards for the masses and for establishing and promoting collective goods. Establishing universal health care and universal funding for higher education, in addition to the strengthening of food stamps, head start, job training, Social Security, and a slew of other welfare programs will only be accomplished by increasing our support for, and reliance on the national government. These progressive victories will not emerge by "getting government out of our lives," or by turning our back on national politics. ....

Americans must realize that the only way forward is through a direct confrontation with political and economic elites. Positive progressive change is never willingly given up by elites - it must be forcibly taken from below. This is the most important lesson to take from the global backlash against neoliberalism.

UN Fact-Finding Mission Says Israelis "Executed" US Citizen Furkan Dogan

Monday 27 September 2010

by: Gareth Porter, t r u t h o u t | Report

http://www.truth-out.org/un-fact-finding-mission-says-israelis-executed-us-citizen-furkan-dogan63609

The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla released last week shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos.

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The report says Dogan had apparently been "lying on the deck in a conscious or semi-conscious, state for some time" before being shot in his face.

The forensic evidence that establishes that fact is "tattooing around the wound in his face," indicating that the shot was "delivered at point blank range."  The report describes the forensic evidence as showing that "the trajectory of the wound, from bottom to top, together with a vital abrasion to the left shoulder that could be consistent with the bullet exit point, is compatible with the shot being received while he was lying on the ground on his back."

Bacevich on Woodward, "Obama's Wars"

Prisoners of War Bob Woodward and All the President’s Men (2010 Edition) 
By Andrew J. Bacevich
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175300/tomgram:_andrew_bacevich,_the_washington_gossip_machine__/

Obama’s Wars reportedly contains this comment by President Obama to Secretary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates regarding Afghanistan:  "I'm not doing 10 years... I'm not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars."

Aren’t you, Mr. President?  Don’t be so sure.

Obama’s Wars also affirms what we already suspected about the decision-making process that led up to the president’s announcement at West Point in December 2009 to prolong and escalate the war.  Bluntly put, the Pentagon gamed the process to exclude any possibility of Obama rendering a decision not to its liking.


Pick your surge: 20,000 troops? Or 30,000 troops?  Or 40,000 troops?  Only the most powerful man in the world -- or Goldilocks contemplating three bowls of porridge -- could handle a decision like that.  Even as Obama opted for the middle course, the real decision had already been made elsewhere by others: the war in Afghanistan would expand and continue.

And then there’s this from the estimable General David Petraeus: "I don't think you win this war,” Woodward quotes the field commander as saying. “I think you keep fighting... This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives."

Here we confront a series of questions to which Woodward (not to mention the rest of Washington) remains steadfastly oblivious.  Why fight a war that even the general in charge says can’t be won?  What will the perpetuation of this conflict cost?  Who will it benefit?  Does the ostensibly most powerful nation in the world have no choice but to wage permanent war?  Are there no alternatives?  Can Obama shut down an unwinnable war now about to enter its tenth year?  Or is he -- along with the rest of us -- a prisoner of war?

After Summers Comes the Fall

After Summers Comes the Fall

by: Robert Scheer  |  Truthdig | Op-Ed
http://www.truth-out.org/robert-scheer-after-summers-comes-fall63267

Even Bill Clinton, who signed off on the radical deregulation enabling this financial meltdown, expressed remorse in one surprisingly honest moment. In an interview on ABC’s “This Week” last April, Clinton was asked by Jake Tapper if he had received bad advice from Summers and his predecessor, Robert Rubin, on regulating financial derivatives, and he replied: “On derivatives, yeah I think they were wrong, and I think I was wrong to take [their advice], because the argument on derivatives was that these things are expensive and sophisticated and only a handful of investors will buy them and they don’t need any extra protection and any extra transparency.”

The Elizabeth Warren Saga

Obama Prepares to Sort of Appoint Elizabeth Warren to Something

by John Nichols

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/16-8

The president could have appointed Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and dared the Senate to reject a woman who has become the face of the fight to hold big banks, credit card companies and speculators to account. If Republicans threatened to block her appointment, they would have clarified the question of which party is working for Wall Street and which party is on the side of Main Street.

Elizabeth Warren In Office - But Not In Power

Banksters Cheer Tepid Rules on Anniversary of Lehman's Fall

by Danny Schechter

At the same time, economics analyst Yves Smith warns, don't believe the hype: "It is now official that Warren is at best a placeholder; she cannot have much impact. She can't make much in the way of policy or personnel choices; that would encroach on the authority of an incoming director. And even her ability to influence the choice of a nominee is questionable. Her taking the advisory role now assures that the nomination of the permanent director will come after the midterm Congressional elections. Given the virtual certainty of Democratic losses, the odds are high that Team Obama will settle on a "conservative" meaning "won't ruffle the banking industry" choice, and argue its hands were tied.

The Terrible Tale of TARP

The Big Bailout, Two Years Later

The Terrible Tale of TARP

By DEAN BAKER

http://www.counterpunch.org/baker09212010.html

We are also supposed to feel good that the vast majority of the TARP money was repaid. This is another effort to prey on the public’s ignorance. Had it not been for the bailout, most of the major center banks would have been wiped out. This would have destroyed the fortunes of their shareholders, many of their creditors, and their top executives. This would have been a massive redistribution to the rest of society – their loss is our gain.

It is important to remember that the economy would be no less productive following the demise of these Wall Street giants. The only economic fact that would have been different is that the Wall Street crew would have lost claims to hundreds of billions of dollars of the economy’s output each year and trillions of dollars of wealth. That money would instead be available for the rest of society. The fact that they have lost the claim to wealth from their stock and bond holdings makes all the rest of us richer once the economy is again operating near normal levels of output.

Instead, we have the same Wall Street crew calling the shots, doing business pretty much as they always did. The rest of us are sitting here dealing with wreckage of their recklessness: 9.6 percent unemployment and the loss of much of the middle class’s savings in their homes and their retirement accounts. And the lackeys of the Wall Street crew are telling us that we should be thankful that we didn’t have a second Great Depression. Maybe we don’t have the power to keep the bankers from picking our pockets, but we don’t have to believe their lies.

The 'Rightwing Backlash' That Never Was

The consensus is that angry voters are moving rightward. But it's nothing Democrats couldn't fix with a dose of economic populism

by Mark Weisbrot

Then the horror movie scenes began about the dreaded budget deficit, which, over the next decade, is almost entirely attributable to two non-stimulus-related items: Iraq and Afghanistan war spending and the Bush tax cuts. In spite of this well-financed campaign against the scourge of red ink, only 3% of voters see the deficit as the most important issue facing the country, as compared to 32% who chose the economy and 28% for jobs. Somehow, though, the deficit got to be so alarming that it became politically impossible for congress to even talk about another stimulus for the economy. So, very predictably, the recovery lost steam and the Democrats felt just "powerless" to do anything to boost the economy and employment before the election. This guaranteed big losses for their party in the election.

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Republicans were able to keep this country moving to the right for nearly four decades – including through the Clinton years. For much of this time, they used a fake populist appeal based on cultural issues, portraying a "liberal elite" that was contemptuous of the values of working-class white voters – who have generally been the biggest group of swing voters. The strategy succeeded because Democrats refused to make the obvious economic populist appeal to the real interests of these voters – who were getting hammered by the loss of manufacturing jobs, weakening of labour and redistribution of income that was engineered by the leadership of both parties. In 2004, non-college-educated whites with household income of $30,000-50,000 voted for Republicans for congress by a 60-38% margin; in 2006, a switch to a 50-50 split (22 percentage points) contributed significantly to the Democrats' victory in congress.