The Great Identity Politics Swindle

Former UCSC Prof Paul Ortiz describes Obama's victory as a culmination of a multi-generational struggle. Obama, in his words, stands "on the shoulders of giants." It might be more accruate to say that Obama stands in the footprints of Leviathan.

The Military-Intellecutal Complex

More "change" from the Master Swindler (AKA the Swindler in Chief):

One example of the increasingly intensified and expansive symbiosis between the military-industrial complex and academia was on full display when Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, announced the creation of what he calls a new "Minerva Consortium," ironically named after the goddess of wisdom, whose purpose is to fund various universities to "carry out social-sciences research relevant to national security."(1) Gates's desire to turn universities into militarized knowledge factories producing knowledge, research and personnel in the interest of the Homeland (In)Security State should be of special concern for intellectuals, artists, academics and others who believe that the university should oppose such interests and alignments.
...
Militarization suggests more than simply a militaristic ideal - with its celebration of war as the truest measure of the health of the nation and the soldier-warrior as the most noble expression of the merging of masculinity and unquestioning patriotism - but an intensification and expansion of the underlying values, practices, ideologies, social relations and cultural representations associated with military culture. What appears new about the amplified militarization of the post-9/11 world is that it has become normalized, serving as a powerful educational force that shapes our lives, memories and daily experiences. As an educational force, military power produces identities, goods, institutions, knowledge, modes of communication and affective investments - in short, it now bears down on all aspects of social life and the social order.

This is how ruling class hegemony is reproduced. This is how the working and middle classes come to internalize the values and interests of society's dominant groups. Perhaps the subaltern, or under-classes are our only hope. Perhaps all the bourgeois theorist of revolution got it all wrong: universities do not constitute an infrastructure of dissent, or sites of revolutionary ferment. Perhaps they are just one more hoop in the great American game know as "gettin mine before you get yours"... Perhaps it is only the 2/3 of Americans who have not experienced that great mind-fuck known as a college education who can effectively distinguish their ass form their elbow.

But alas Henry A. Giroux holds out hope for the revolutionary ideal, and still believes that the university can be reclaimed from the Wall Street and Pentagon swine who currently hold the levers of power (did i mention Condi is coming back to the farm...):

While registering the shift in power toward the large-scale pr oduction of death, disposability and exclusion, a new understanding of the meaning and purpose of higher education must also point to notions of agency, power and responsibility that operate in the service of life, democratic struggles and the expansion of human rights.

Finally, if higher education is to come to grips with the multilayered pathologies produced by militarization, it will have to rethink not merely the space of the university as a democratic public sphere, but also the global space in which intellectuals, educators, students, artists, labor unions and other social actors and movements can form transnational alliances to oppose the death-dealing ideology of militarization and its effects on the world - including violence, pollution, massive poverty, racism, the arms trade, growth of privatized armies, civil conflict, child slavery and the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the Bush regime comes to an end, it is time for educators and students to take a stand and develop global organizations that can be mobilized in the effort to supplant a culture of war with a culture of peace, whose elemental principles must be grounded in relations of economic, political, cultural and social democracy and the desire to sustain human life.

About the author:

Henry A. Giroux holds the Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Canada. His most recent books include: "Take Back Higher Education" (co-authored with Susan Searls Giroux, 2006), "The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex" (2007), and "Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed" (2008).

More from Prof Giroux on the "crisis of actually existing democracy."

Robert Gates? How is this "Change"?

How exactly does keeping the executor of the "surge" amount to "change." Even Rumsfeld by the time he was shit-canned had come to accept the idea that the "wise men" of the Iraq Study Group were right and the the US would have to start drawing down its force levels in Iraq (see Gardner, "Mr. Rumsfeld's War" in Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How not to learn from the past (ed) Gardner and Young).

It is now abundantly clear that "change" was merely a vacuous slogan which the Power Elite used to engineer continuity. Obama is a pawn of the vested interests.

What could be better than a "Green Deal"?

Mike Davis calls for economic triage. Before any light-rail for mid-to-upper class commuters, Davis calls for investments in health and education. These sectors are more labor intensive and will deliver more bang where it is is needed most.
Davis offers a warning: beware of the "green bubble" and eco-profiteers. The problem is capitalism.

The State of Exception Continues

Obama will employ the same tactics in pursuit of the same ends. Democracy Now! on (and here) Obama's "intelligence" advisers.

Looting the Treasury on the Way out the door

Electoral politics in the US are a spectator sport. They keep us safely anesthetized. Elections are the opiate of the masses.

Naomi Klein on the thieves in high-places and the futility of the electoral process:

Unfortunately for the market, voters have just voted for change. They voted for a candidate who really turned the election into a referendum on this economic policy of rampant deregulation. So you’ve really got a problem here. How do you reconcile the market’s desire for status quo with the voters’ demand for real change? There is no way to do that without a few bumps along the way. And I’m quite concerned that what we’re seeing from Obama’s team is an accepting of this logic that they need to give the market what it wants, which is continuity, smooth transition, which is really just code for more of the same. And when you hear names like Larry Summers being bandied about for Treasury Secretary, that’s feeding the market exactly what it wants, which is more of the same.

Barack Obama turned his election campaign into a referendum on the mania for deregulation and free trade and really less trickle-down economics. He said the idea of giving more and more to the people at the top and waiting for it to trickle down to the people below, and that really resonated with voters, and they elected him on that platform. And let’s remember, Amy, because this really is about democracy, that his campaign turned around when the economic crisis really hit Wall Street. He was losing ground to McCain when the crisis hit Wall Street, and Obama started using this language of really putting the ideology of deregulation on trial. That’s when his numbers turned around. That’s when he went on his winning streak that took him all the way to Election Day.

Yeah, this bailout is really not a bailout at all; it’s a parting gift to the people that the Bush—that George Bush once referred to jokingly as “my base.” You know, in one of my columns recently, I likened it to what European colonial rulers used to do when they finally realized they had to hand over power; they would loot the treasury on the way out the door.

You know, I always think about what the International Monetary Fund does when developing countries come and ask for a loan. Think about what they’re doing right now. The International Monetary Fund says, “You want a loan? Well, here’s our list of conditions.” They used to call it structural adjustment. The same thing could be done to the auto industry. If they’re coming for a bailout, they should be structurally adjusted, and taxpayers should be playing IMF to the auto industry and insisting that they change the way they work, that they build green automobiles, that they protect jobs. It can’t simply be a blank check.

Economists with Guns

A review of: Bradley R. Simpson. Economists with Guns. Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968. Stanford University Press, 2008.

Review Published by H-Diplo on 10 November 2008