Evo Morales and the New Wave of Democracy in Latin America

7.04.28
Published April 30th, 2007

Evo Morales, the 47 year old President of Bolivia, is the first indigenous head-of-state in America. Democratically elected with 54% of the vote, he is soft-spoken, honest, mature, humble and trying to balance a history of oligarchic elitism with the growing needs on his people. His Vice-President, Alvaro Garcia Linera, is a dedicated neo-socialist mathematician with a rational approach to change. They symbolize the new breed of government which has the Bush Administration perplexed and unable to put in their pocket. Consequently, Donald Rumsfeld ordered an airbase be built in nearby Estigarribia, Paraguay capable of launching an offensive to gain control of Bolivia’s natural gas resources.

Listen to Greg Palast, author of Armed Madhouse, interview President Palacios of Ecuador explaining how the World Bank really works. Listen to John Perkins, author of the NY Times bestseller, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, explain how US’s foreign policy plays Deal or No Deal where the bankers always win. Listen to Chalmers Johnson, author of Nemesis (The Last Days of the American Republic) detail Rumsfeld’s military offensive into the heart of South America. Listen to President Evo Morales in an exclusive interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales of Democracy Now.

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The U.S.’ War on Democracy

Interview with John Pilger

Monday, Apr 30, 2007

By: Pablo Navarrete – Venezuelanalysis.com

John Pilger is an award-winning journalist, author and documentary filmmaker, who began his career in 1958 in his homeland, Australia, before moving to London in the 1960s. He has been a foreign correspondent and a front-line war reporter, beginning with the Vietnam War in 1967. He is an impassioned critic of foreign military and economic adventures by Western governments.
"It is too easy," Pilger says, "for Western journalists to see humanity in terms of its usefulness to 'our' interests and to follow government agendas that ordain good and bad tyrants, worthy and unworthy victims and present 'our' policies as always benign when the opposite is usually true. It's the journalist's job, first of all, to look in the mirror of his own society."

Pilger also believes a journalist ought to be a guardian of the public memory and often quotes Milan Kundera: "The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

In a career that has produced more than 55 television documentaries, Pilger's first major film for the cinema, The War on Democracy, will be released in the United Kingdom on May 11, 2007. Pilger spent several weeks filming in Venezuela and The War on Democracy contains an exclusive interview with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

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PN: Could you begin by telling us what your new film ‘The War on Democracy’ is about?

JP: I happened to watch George Bush’s second inauguration address in which he pledged to “bring democracy to the world.” He mentioned the words “democracy” and “liberty” twenty one times. It was a very important speech because, unlike the purple prose of previous presidents (Ronald Reagan excluded), he left no doubt that he was stripping noble concepts like “democracy” and “liberty” of their true meaning – government, for, by and of the people.

I wanted to make a film that illuminated this disguised truth -- that the United States has long waged a war on democracy behind a facade of propaganda designed to contort the intellect and morality of Americans and the rest of us. For many of your readers, this is known. However, for others in the West, the propaganda that has masked Washington’s ambitions has been entrenched, with its roots in the incessant celebration of World War Two, the “good war”, then “victory” in the cold war. For these people, the “goodness” of US power represents “us”. Thanks to Bush and his cabal, and to Blair, the scales have fallen from millions of eyes. I would like “The War on Democracy” to contribute something to this awakening.

The film is about the power of empire and of people. It was shot in Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, and the United States and is set also in Guatemala and Nicaragua. It tells the story of “America’s backyard,” the dismissive term given to all of Latin America. It traces the struggle of indigenous people first against the Spanish, then against European immigrants who reinforced the old elite. Our filming was concentrated in the barrios where the continent’s “invisible people” live in hillside shanties that defy gravity. It tells, above all, a very positive story: that of the rise of popular social movements that have brought to power governments promising to stand up to those who control national wealth and to the imperial master. Venezuela has taken the lead, and a highlight of the film is a rare face-to-face interview with President Hugo Chavez whose own developing political consciousness, and sense of history (and good humour), are evident. The film investigates the 2002 coup d’etat against Chavez and casts it in a contemporary context. It also describes the differences between Venezuela and Cuba, and the shift in economic and political power since Chavez was first elected. In Bolivia, the recent, tumultuous past is told through quite remarkable testimony from ordinary people, including those who fought against the piracy of their resources. In Chile, the film looks behind the mask of this apparently modern, prosperous “model” democracy and finds powerful, active ghosts. In the United States, the testimony of those who ran the “backyard” echo those who run that other backyard, Iraq; sometimes they are the same people. Chris Martin (my fellow director) and I believe “The War on Democracy” is well timed. We hope people will see it as another way of seeing the world: as a metaphor for understanding a wider war on democracy and the universal struggle of ordinary people, from Venezuela to Vietnam, Palestine to Guatemala.

As you say, Latin America has often been described as the U.S.’ backyard. How important is Latin America for the U.S. in the global context?

Latin America’s strategic importance is often dismissed. That’s because it is so important. Read Greg Grandin’s recent, excellent history (I interview him in the film) in which he makes the case that Latin America has been Washington’s “workshop” for developing and honing and rewarding its imperial impulses elsewhere. For example, when the US “retreated” from Southeast Asia, where did its “democracy builders” go to reclaim their “vision”? Latin America. The result was the murderous assaults on Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, and the darkness of “Operation Condor” in the southern cone. This was Ronald Reagan’s “war on terror”, which of course was a war of terror that provided basic training for those now running the Bush/Cheney “long war” in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Noam Chomsky recently said that after five centuries of European conquests, Latin America was reasserting its independence. Do you agree with this?

Yes, I agree. It’s humbling for someone coming from prosperous Europe to witness the poorest taking charge of their lives, with people rarely asking, as we in the West often ask, “What can I do?” They know what to do. In Cochabamba, Bolivia, the population barricaded their city until they began to take control of their water. In El Alto, perhaps the poorest city on the continent, people stood against a repressive regime until it fell. This is not to suggest that complete independence has been won. Venezuela’s economy, for example, is still very much a “neo-liberal” economy that continues to reward those with capital. The changes made under Chavez are extraordinary – in grassroots democracy, health care, education and the sheer uplifting of people’s lives – but true equity and social justice and freedom from corruption remain distant goals. Venezuela’s well-off complain endlessly that their economic power has been diminished; it hasn’t; economic growth has never been higher, business has never been better. What the rich no longer own is the government. And when the majority own the economy, true independence will be in sight. That’s true everywhere.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte, recently called Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez “a threat to democracy” in Latin America. What are you views on this?

This is Orwellian, like “war is peace.” Negroponte, whose record of overseeing Washington’s terrorism in Central America is infamous, is right about Hugo Chavez in one respect. Chavez is a “threat” – he’s the threat of an example to others that independence from Washington is actually possible.

President Chavez talks about building "socialism of the 21st Century" in Venezuela. To what extent do you think this project is different to the socialist experiences in the twentieth century?

In the time I spent with Chavez, what struck me was how unselfconsciously he demonstrated his own developing political awareness. I was intrigued to watch a man who is as much an educator as a leader. He will arrive at a school or a water project where local people are gathered and under his arm will be half a dozen books – Orwell, Chomsky, Dickens, Victor Hugo. He’ll proceed to quote from them and relate them to the condition of his audience. What he’s clearly doing is building ordinary people’s confidence in themselves. At the same, he’s building his own political confidence and his understanding of the exercise of power. I doubt that he began as a socialist when he won power in 1998 – which makes his political journey all the more interesting. Clearly, he was always a reformer who paid respect to his impoverished roots. Certainly, the Venezuelan economy today is not socialist; perhaps it’s on the way to becoming something like the social economy of Britain under the reforming Attlee Labour government. He is probably what Europeans used to be proud to call themselves: a social democrat. Look, this game of labels is pretty pointless; he is an original and he inspires; so let’s see where the Bolivarian project goes. True power for enduring change can only be sustained at the grassroots, and Chavez’s strength is that he has inspired ordinary people to believe in alternatives to the old venal order. We have nothing like this spirit in Britain, where more and more people can’t be bothered to vote any more. It’s a lesson of hope, at the very least.

************

'The War on Democracy' is to be released in UK cinemas on Friday 15th June. There will be a special preview in London on Friday 11th May. The film is released in Australia in September 2007. For more info visit: www.johnpilger.com or www.warondemocracy.net

Big media's assault on democracy

Ryan Blethen / Times editorial columnist

"Enough" is a word that means little to corporate media. The few bloated companies that remain atop the media food-chain have crossed the line from growing profits to actively pushing rule and law changes that will wound our nation.

These mega-companies move from one industry to the next in the name of consolidation, driven by a Wall Street appetite that demands more every quarter. Companies once devoted to a particular sector are now behemoths that have control over almost everything read, watched or listened to.

Time Warner is a prime example. A magazine publisher and a movie studio is now a leviathan made up of Time Inc., AOL, HBO, Time Warner Cable, New Line Cinema, Turner Broadcasting Systems and Warner Bros. Entertainment. Each part comprises a number of other companies. Time Inc. consists of 130 magazines.

Information

www.freepress.net/

www.savenetradio.org/

www.savetheinternet.com/

www.stopbigmedia.com/

www.fcc.gov/

It is Time Warner that is responsible for the latest assault on a mechanism set up to promote democracy and innovation. I am not talking about the Internet, but the U.S. Postal Service. That's right, old snail mail.

Our postal system is written into the Constitution and was set up in a way that all publications, regardless of size or influence, could reach the public. James Madison even said that publications should be sent free.

"It is really one of the great build-outs of democracy in our country," said Bob McChesney, professor of communication at the University of Illinois and president of Free Press.

The mail system faces new challenges in an electronic world, but it is still vital, and democracy will suffer if the new rates instituted by the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) are allowed to stand.

The Postal Service sought a modest increase that was acceptable for magazines and periodicals. Then Time Warner got the ear of the PRC, which thrust an incredibly convoluted pay metric written by Time Warner on the Postal Service. The new rates are good for Time Warner because it will be cheaper for them to send out their 130 titles, while smaller and independent publications will be paying crippling rates.

McChesney believes this change, scheduled to go into effect July 15, is dangerous for the nation because it will silence voices that are the bedrock of original reporting.

"The crucial point here is that most of the original material online and most of the articles that bloggers are blogging about come from ink on paper," said McChesney, who is fighting the PRC's decision.

Time Warner is hardly the only Biggie to cozy up to a regulatory agency. The consolidation of the press has been going strong for nearly three decades. Radio contracted like an imploding sun after the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The act allowed companies to own an obscene number of stations in the same market, while the Federal Communications Commission did little.

This push to collect and condense has now infringed on the Internet. Cable and telecommunications companies such as Comcast and Verizon are fighting the network-neutrality effort. There are currently no permanent rules stopping these companies that supply the pipes through which the Internet flows from tinkering with different pay scales. Without a neutrality law and strict oversight by the FCC, companies and Web sites would have to pay additional fees to the network provider so Web pages could load at the speed they should. The American consumer — who already pays more than consumers in other countries for broadband service — would pay an even larger bill.

Progress has been made on the net-neutrality front. Late last year, AT&T accepted a net-neutrality rule so its merger with BellSouth would be approved by the FCC. Problem is, AT&T is only held to the rule for two years. Net neutrality has not seemed to hurt AT&T. The company posted a first-quarter profit of $2.8 billion, up from $1.4 billion.

Radio on the Internet is now also under attack. If a recent ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board stands, small and independent Internet radio stations will have to pay royalty fees so onerous that many might not survive.

The aggression directed at democratizing systems that have long served — and should continue to serve — our nation is worrisome. The institutions charged to protect the public have failed.

Americans have had enough. Now is the time to get active.

Ryan Blethen's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is rblethen@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company

Israel: “Jewish only” or democratic?

April 25, 2007

By Sonja Karkar

The time will have to come for Israel to declare its hand: is it “a state of the Jewish people throughout the world” as it defines itself, or a state of all its citizens, both Jewish and non-Jewish? So far Israel has managed to convince the Western world that it is the only democracy in the region, but neglects to add that this democracy works only for its Jewish citizens. This is the conundrum: Israel has been unable to reconcile what it says it is, with want it wants to be – democratic and exclusively Jewish.

All of Israel’s one million plus Palestinian residents – the survivors and descendants of the 1948 Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine - have long felt discriminated against, despite Israel paying lip-service to their democratic rights. They also felt on the sidelines of what was being played out in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, that is until Azmi Bishara, the outspoken political leader of the National Democratic Assembly (NDA) or Balad in Israel and a Knesset member, began campaigning for the collective rights of Palestinians. His vision is not just for change inside Israel, but involves an all-inclusive civil rights struggle against political Zionism - the racist and colonialist policies that have dispossessed, marginalised and oppressed all Palestinians for almost 60 years. This is what Israel is at pains to put down by any means. It cannot afford to have someone like Azmi Bishara rallying people to his way of thinking. Now, after many attempts to muzzle him, Israel has finally succeeded in getting him to resign from the Knesset and to stay out of the country.

A list of unpublished charges were drawn up against Bishara whilst he was abroad - charges so serious that they would likely have landed him in jail on his return. While the charges themselves are not known, it is not difficult to guess at what they involve. Bishara has been previously charged with undermining the “Jewish nature of the state”, but the charges have always been dropped. This time it seems that Israel’s state security services may have formulated charges that not only label Bishara a national security threat, but accuse him of treason and espionage. The media is not allowed to discuss any of it and even Bishara himself is reticent on the matter, no doubt to protect himself from being further arraigned because he is adamant that he will eventually return to Israel.

Effectively, Bishara and the NDA skated on thin ice legally whenever they called for full and complete equality between Jews and Palestinians in a state for all its citizens. Israel’s Basic Law: The Knesset (Amendment No 9 of 1985) stops people from participating in elections if any party platform implies the “denial of the existence of the state of Israel as the state of Jewish people”. Only recently, Israel’s Shin Bet (secret police) let it be known that it would “disrupt the activities of any groups that seek to change the Jewish or democratic character of Israel, even if they use legal means.” However, Bishara’s intention was not to create a fifth column inside Israel. He was in favour of exercising his and his movement’s democratic civil rights to demand that Israel treat all its citizens equally and recognise its Palestinian citizens as a national minority in their own homeland. The latter demand, of course, is enormously contentious because that would require Israel to acknowledge the falsity of its own historical narrative of exclusive rights to a land it claimed was without people. From that would follow that the indigenous Palestinians were, and still are being, systematically uprooted to make way for an exclusively Jewish democratic state in all of the land.

The discourse has been taken up in the Palestinian public arena and now Israel is beginning to feel the same stirrings that finally exposed Apartheid South Africa for the racist state it was. It knows that sooner or later it will be forced to commit to being a “Jewish state only” or recognise the Palestinians as equal citizens and a national minority in their own land. Already Palestinian intellectuals have drafted a document called The Democratic Constitution which envisages Israel as a multicultural democracy for the people living and born there. Whatever Azmi Bishara does now in exile, the seed has burst: he has inspired a subjugated people to seek again their liberation. What is surprising is that Israel has taken so long to understand the lessons of history - that no one person or state no matter how powerful can oppress a people forever. However, Israel still has the option to switch course and institute democracy for all, and if genuinely undertaken, this may well be the solution worth working towards for both peoples.


Sonja Karkar is the founder and President of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia. See www.womenforpalestine.com

Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/ Palestine

cover > Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine by Joel Kovel >

Author Kovel, Joel
Publisher Pluto Press
ISBN 0745325696
Binding PB
List Price £15.99
Discount Price £12.79 (20% off!)
Categories Middle East, Politics

buy this book

• A call to transform Israel into a secular democracy by a leading writer

• 'This book is absolutely fundamental for those who reject the unfortunate confusion between Jews, Judaism, Zionism and the State of Israel -- a confusion which is the basis for systematic manipulation by the imperialist power system. It convincingly argues in favour of a single secular state for Israelis and Palestinians as the only democratic solution for the region.' Samir Amin, director of the Third World Forum

Joel Kovel argues that the inner contradictions of Zionism have led Israel to a 'state-sponsored racism' fully as incorrigible as that of apartheid South Africa and deserving of the same resolution. Only a path toward a single-state secular democracy can provide the justice essential to healing the wounds of the Middle East.

Kovel is well-known writer on the Middle East conflict. This book draws on his detailed knowledge to show that Zionism and democracy are essentially incompatible. He offers a thoughtful account of the emergence and disintegration of Zionism that integrates psychological, political, cultural, economic, and ideological levels.

Ultimately, Kovel argues, a two-state solution is essentially hopeless as it concedes too much to the regressive forces of nationalism, wherein lie the roots of continued conflict.

CONTENTS:

Prologue

Part One COMING TO ZION

1. A People Apart

2. The Unnatural History of a Bad Idea

3. The Spectre of Shoah

Part Two THE JEWISH STATE

4. The Only Democracy in the Middle East

5. Facts on the Ground

6. Partners in Zion

7. Bad Conscience and State Racism

8. Slouching Toward Jerusalem

Part Three ZIONISM OVERCOME

9. Beyond the Two-State Solution

10. Palesrael: A Secular and Universal Democracy for Israel/Palestine

Bibliography

Index

Joel Kovel has served as a professor in Psychiatry, Anthropology, Political Science, Social Studies and Communications. He is currently editor-in-chief of Capitalism Nature Socialism (www.cnsjournal.org/). Kovel has developed his distinctive approach, which draws on both psychoanalysis and Marxism, across a wide range of publications. His ten books include The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World? (2002), White Racism: A Psychohistory (1970) and Red Hunting in the Promised Land: Anticommunism and the Making of America (1994). Kovel is also a political activist and a media commentator.

Israel's Strategic Threat

Related
Knesset committee to consider revoking MK Bishara's benefits
Statement of Condemnation of the Israeli Campaign against The Palestinian Intellectual and National Figure Azmi Bishara
Hands off Azmi! The Dangerous Politics of "A State for All Its Citizens"
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by NEVE GORDON

[posted online on April 17, 2007]

In early April the rumors about Dr. Azmi Bishara, the most famous Arab Knesset member, began circulating on the Internet: Bishara is afraid to return to Israel; Bishara intends to resign from the Knesset; the Israeli Security Agency has decided to accuse Bishara of treason and espionage. The gag order preventing the publication of any information about Bishara's actions made the rumors all the more intriguing. What did Bishara, in fact, do?

Bishara, a Christian Palestinian citizen of Israel from Nazareth, established the National Democratic Assembly known as Balad in 1995 and became a Knesset member in 1996. Since then he has been interrogated several times by the Israeli Security Agency, and has been charged and found not guilty twice: once for organizing visits to Syria for Israeli Arabs who wished to visit family members and a second time for speeches he gave in Syria and Israel praising Hezbollah's resistance in southern Lebanon and Palestinian opposition in the occupied territories. His visit to Beirut following last year's Lebanon war, alongside his claim that Israel was committing war crimes in Lebanon and carrying out genocide against Shiite Muslims, was, for many Israelis, yet another indication that Bishara has been using his parliamentary immunity to harm Israel. Many Jewish members of the Knesset have argued for years that Bishara is a fifth column and that Israeli democracy has a right and indeed an obligation to defend itself against the Bishara threat.

But what, one might ask, are Bishara's new offenses? It is, after all, highly unlikely that he is a spy on the payroll of a foreign entity. And while one may not like his uncompromising opposition to Israeli and American regional policies and his admiration for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's militancy and strategic intelligence, expressing such views does not in and of itself jeopardize Israel's existence. Bishara, it seems, is a threat not because of any particular action or statement but because he has become a symbol of a new kind of opposition within Israel.

During the past few months, political activists and members of the Palestinian intellectual elite within Israel, all of whom are Israeli citizens, have drafted four documents that articulate how they conceive the state's future. The underlying assumption of all of these documents is that as long as Israel is defined as a Jewish state, its laws will always fall short of basic democratic principles and, more particularly, the right of all its citizens to full equality.

The authors of the document called "The Democratic Constitution" maintain that the Arab citizens of Israel should be considered a "homeland minority" with national rights. The idea is to transform Israel into a bilingual and multicultural democracy for all its citizens, rather than a Jewish democracy, which they argue is an oxymoron. Such transformation would inevitably mean changing the laws of citizenship and immigration so that citizenship would no longer be granted automatically to any Jew wishing to immigrate but rather to anyone born within Israel's territory or whose parent or spouse is a citizen, or to people persecuted due to their political beliefs.

Not long after the documents' publication, Israel's second-largest newspaper, Ma'ariv, reported a meeting between the head of the security agency, Yuval Diskin, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. During the meeting Diskin warned Olmert that the radicalization of Israel's Arab citizens constitutes a "strategic threat to the state's existence." Diskin added that "the proliferation of the visionary documents published by the different Arab elites in Israel is particularly worrisome, [since] the documents are united by their conception of Israel as a state for all its citizens and not a Jewish state." The head of the security services concluded that "the separatist and subversive patterns represented by the elites might engender a new direction and mobilize the masses."

Balad sent a letter protesting Diskin's assertions, arguing that legitimate political activity whose aim is to change the state's character should not be considered subversive or dangerous. According to Ha'aretz, the Israeli Security Agency replied that it "would foil the activity of anyone seeking to harm Israel's Jewish or democratic character, even if that activity was carried out by legal means."

Diskin's words are telling. He admits not only that anyone who strives to alter the Jewish character of the state is considered an enemy and will be treated as such but that the secret service has no respect for democratic practices and procedures. It is precisely within the context of the four historic documents that one should understand the recent accusations against Bishara. More than anything else, Bishara constitutes a symbolic threat, since he personifies the recent demand of the Palestinian elite to transform Israel from a Jewish democracy to a democracy for all its citizens.

Arab leaders air public relations campaign against Shin Bet

Last update - 07:52 06/04/2007

By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent

Arab leaders are expected to announce on Friday an organized public relations campaign against the Shin Bet security service. Opposition within the Arab sector to Shin Bet policy arose after the security service declared that it intends to disrupt the activities of any groups that seek to change the Jewish or democratic character of Israel, even if they use democratic means.

The campaign will be announced at a conference of the Adalah Center for Arab Minority Rights in Shfaram Friday afternoon.

Arab source said that during the meeting, delegates would discuss the relationship of the Arab public to the Shin Bet and elucidate ways of dealing with the Shin Bet's treatment of the Arab sector.

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All figures involved in drafting the four documents relating to the future of the Arab sector in Israel have been invited to participate in the summit.

This includes those who drafted Musawa organization's Ten Points, Adalah's Democratic Constitution, the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee's Future Vision, and the yet-unpublished Haifa Treaty. Also invited were Knesset members from all Arab political parties.

Adalah has a criminal probe into the Shin Bet's activity, accusing the security service of exceeding its authority and causing incitement against the Arab public.

The Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) filed a petition to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz last month to order the Shin Bet to stop trying to block what the group called legitimate political activity.

ACRI's petition follows a letter the Shin Bet sent the previous week to the predominantly Arab Balad party's journal, Fasal al-Makal, warning that it would foil the activity of anyone seeking to harm Israel's Jewish or democratic character, even if that activity was carried out by legal means.

The letter came in response to a complaint filed by Fasal al-Makal to the Prime Minister's Office about a report in Maariv a few days earlier, in which Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin was quoted calling what was happening among Israeli Arabs as a "strategic threat." The issue was raised following the recent drafting of four documents in the Arab community calling for a revision of Israel's character,

Democracy is for the rich

KEVIN BARR

Friday, March 30, 2007

Democracy is a system of government where the political power rests with the nation's population either directly or through elected representatives. It is government of the people, for the people, by the people.

From this one should be able to infer that the purpose of democracy is to build a just society where the interests of all the people are cared for rich and poor, men and women, minorities as well as the majority and the economy works for the benefit of all. Democracy should be about the ordering of society to bring about justice for all. If it does not work for the common good then there is something seriously wrong.

The United States, in particular, has been a staunch promoter of democracy and has fought to have democracy entrenched throughout the world. Yet some writers have raised a number of important questions about the nature of US democracy.

For example, why is it that only those from wealthy backgrounds are able to become presidential candidates?

Why is it that the US not only champions democracy but champions extreme individualism and unbridled capitalism and has strongly opposed any form of socialism (which might spread the benefits of development more widely among people)?

Why is it that America's wealthy elites are able to exert such strong influence on political elections and economic decisions?

Alesina and Glaeser in their book Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe (2004) point out that all the American political institutions are ultimately the product of an 18th Century Constitution which was crafted by a minority of white and wealthy men of property determined to stop the State from expropriating their wealth and to limit the amount of redistribution the poor could demand of the rich.

Hence, the concerns of the rich are strongly protected and the US has a bias against welfare for the poor and redistribution of wealth. Comparing the US and Europe they note:

"Not only does government spending in the Europe favour the poor much more than in the United States, but government tax policy as well is much more distributive. Income tax rates are more progressive than in the United States."

Phillips in his book, Wealth and Democracy: a Political History of the American Rich (2002) provides hard evidence of the extreme prosperity of America's wealthy elite and shows how they are able to use their strong political influence to structure economic policy (e.g. tax policy) in their own self-interest. On the other hand, Barbara Ehrenreich in her Nickel and Dimed (2001) shows how the US economic system so adversely affects the lives of the working poor.

So, while all Americans may be able to vote in elections, does democracy in the US work for the benefit of all the people or mostly for the benefit of those with wealth and power?

If democracy is for the benefit of all the people of a nation, why is such blatant inequality tolerated? Does democracy necessarily work in the interests of justice for all?

William Blum once of the US State Department in his book Rogue State (2000:170) notes that: "Americans are raised to fervently believe that no progress can be made in any society in the absence of elections. They are taught to equate elections with democracy, and democracy with elections."

Yet, as we know, elections alone do not guarantee real democracy.

Some would say that liberal democracy in the US (and some other countries as well) has become an integral part of the capitalist system and, therefore, is class-based and not fully or truly democratic or participatory. It is "bourgeois democracy" where only the most financially powerful people have their say.

Consequently it is fundamentally un-egalitarian and facilitates economic exploitation of the poorer classes. Certainly the cost of political campaigning may mean that the system favours the rich (who may be a small minority of the total number of voters) and thus in reality the elected government becomes a form of plutocracy (or rule of the elite).

Thus, according to Marx, parliamentary elections are an opportunity citizens of a country get every few years to decide who among the ruling classes will misrepresent them in parliament.

Or again, modern democracy may be regarded as a dishonest farce used to keep the masses from getting restless by providing the hope that things might get better when they have another election.

Reforms are needed in the electoral process so that the power of big money is removed. Otherwise democracy can never be "of the people" i.e. poor or middle class people. It will always be class dominated. Democracy will be for the rich.

In this connection ownership of the media by a few of the rich elite may lead to more specific distortion of the electoral process. The media are themselves a vital element of the electoral process. They can be used to protect the interests of their own class and suppress any criticism of the status quo.

It is important for us to understand this US bias towards individualism and wealth and against welfare and redistribution because the US dominates decisions made by the World Bank and other financial institutions.

Moreover it is a key player in the decisions of the G8 countries which advise us on development.

The US will obviously side with regimes which think as it does and try to mould us in their own image. Consequently the benefits of its form of democracy will not benefit all the people but only the elite. We have seen this happen even in our own country. In this connection it is interesting to note the words of Epeli Hau'ofa (1987:101): "One very important development that we have to watch carefully is the emergence of privileged classes in the islands of the South Pacific for it is certain that the fates of the island communities are being decided by the ways in which these groups act, first, in relation to their own underprivileged people and, second, in relation to their important connections with each other and with similar groups elsewhere. It is the privileged who decide on the needs of their communities and whose rising aspirations and affluence entail worsening conditions for the poor."

Father Kevin Father is the program co-ordinator economic justice for ECREA. The views expressed are his and not necessarily that of his employer

War with Iran will destroy U.S. and the world

The Herald-Dispatch
OPINION

Peter Chamberlin

March 29, 2007

The neocon plan for world domination goes on. Even without former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and all the other key players, the violent plan to remake the Middle East in our image is now shifting into a higher gear. If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of a clock counting down. Bush is running out of time.

The majority of the American people think that the war in Iraq has been a series of "mistakes" that have destabilized the region and have given Iran a big boost. People such as Dick Cheney insist that all is going swimmingly. They deny that anyone can stop them from doing whatever they please; the will of the American people does not matter. The war will expand into Iran, regardless of the will of the people.

There are now so many lit fuses leading into Iran that an explosive confrontation in the very near future is almost certain. The crisis of the British sailors held -- in retaliation for the U.S. grabbing an Iranian general and arresting diplomats -- will be resolved in days, according to Tony Blair. American/Israeli-sponsored Sunni terrorist groups, operating out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan (Kurdish PPK, Saddam's MEK and Pakistani Balochs) have been staging bomb attacks in Iranian cities with significant civilian casualties.

UN sanctions against Iran might carry military penalties. Israeli reports dwell on the need to destroy Iranian reactors before they are fueled. Congress caved to the Israeli-American lobby and dropped efforts to block new unauthorized wars.

While Congress and the American people are distracted by the sleight of hand that the mainstream media calls "the surge," the real surge is set to take place in the Persian Gulf.

European sources report high-level governmental leaks that the war with Iran is set to commence in April. Middle Eastern sources report the same. Whenever it begins, the entire world will fall apart when it does, as the Middle East goes up in flames and the global economy is destroyed by $100-per-barrel oil.

Supporters of immediate military action to disarm Iran and to overthrow the mullahs have fully bought into the incendiary propaganda onslaught from the mainstream media.

They believe that Iran (like Iraq before it) really represents a credible threat to the U.S. They accept the idea of America fighting Israel's wars for it. Their blind loyalty causes them to strike out at anyone who dares to challenge the president's bloody losing strategy in the war. They want us to follow Bush, no matter what, even if he leads us over a cliff. They equate loyalty to a counterfeit hero, to patriotism.

Patriots would not allow any leader to destroy our democratic constitutional republic.

If the lost president cannot be reeled in by the American people or by his own dad, he will destroy everything that he has claimed to champion.

If either Israel or the United States is allowed to bomb Iran, then the little war that we call Iraq will be seen as the long-running "firefight" that it really is (not a real war between two military powers).

At that time, the political divisions that keep us Americans at each others' throats today will fall away as democracy falls to martial law, and freedom dies at our own hand.

Click here to add your view to this story

Copyright © 2005 The Herald-Dispatch

US democracy ideals lose steam to Bush 'realism': experts

by Sylvie Lanteaume Wed Mar 28, 2:33 AM ET

Fallout from the Iraq war has prompted a new "realism" in US foreign policy, which is edging out early Bush administration ideals of promoting democracy around the world, analysts say.

US President George W. Bush pushed hard for reform in the Middle East during his first term in office, and still says that ideological change is an integral part of what he calls the "war on terror."

And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she was "really concerned" last week on the eve of an Egyptian constitutional referendum that opponents said was certain to curb freedoms.

Experts say the crippling war in Iraq has forced Washington to pursue "realist" policies over Bush's earlier "idealist" ways.

"The failure of US policy in Iraq has provided autocratic regimes in the Middle East a reprieve from the pressure to democratize, as long as they position themselves clearly on the side of Washington in its looming confrontation with Iran, Syria, and Shiite Islamists," said analyst Marina Ottoway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"The lofty ideals of democracy promotion may still find their way into the administrationÂ’s speeches, but when it comes to policy, AmericaÂ’s enemiesÂ’ enemies are its friends."

Ottoway said Saudi Arabia and Egypt have been "the biggest beneficiaries of the US loss of interest in draining the swamp of autocracy once it was confronted by large alligators such as Iran and its allies."

For Thomas Carothers, another expert at the Carnegie Endowment, dictators of the world have beat back democratic principles by presenting them as a new manifestation of US imperialism.

"The way that President George W. Bush is making democracy promotion a central theme of his foreign policy has clearly contributed to the unease such efforts -- and the idea of 'democracy promotion' itself -- are creating around the world," he wrote in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs.

"Some autocratic governments have won substantial public sympathy by arguing that opposition to Western democracy-promotion is resistance not to democracy itself, but to American interventionism.

"Moreover, the damage that the Bush administration has done to the global image of the United States as a symbol of democracy and human rights by repeatedly violating the rule of law at home and abroad has further weakened the legitimacy of the democracy-promotion cause."

Egypt and Saudi Arabia are not the only countries to benefit from US support while turning a deaf ear to calls for democratic reform.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who just ousted the chief high court justice in what opponents call a power grab, recently received a surprise visit from US Vice President Dick Cheney who simply urged him to do more to fight Al-Qaeda extremists along the border with Afghanistan.

Azerbaijan, under iron-fisted rule by President Ilham Aliev who succeeded his father in 2003, last week signed an energy deal with the United States.

And in US-ally Colombia Bush has been content with President Alvaro Uribe's efforts to control his territory and fight narco-terrorism despite a scandal linking government officials and extremist paramilitaries.

On Point on Hezbollah

Related
Augustus Norton on Hezbollah’s Social Services
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Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007.

Sources

Yesterday, NPR’s On Point aired an hour-long show about my article from this month's magazine, Parties of God: The Bush Doctrine and the rise of Islamic democracy (excerpted online). Other guests included Augustus Richard Norton, professor of international relations at Boston University, and author of the new book Hezbollah: A Short History; Anthony Shadid, correspondent for the Washington Post; and Gidi Grinstein, a former Israeli peace negotiator and president of the Re'ut Institute.

As I told host Tom Ashbrook in summing up the story, “In this part of the world we frequently ask if the Islamic world is ready for democracy, and there's this suggestion that they're not quite mature enough or ready for it--when in fact what we might be asking is whether the West is ready for Islamic democracy, because for more than the past decade, there's been a real flowering of Islamic political parties across the Middle East.”

“It's difficult to see how you're going to lead to real democratic reform,” said Shadid, “and real democratic change in these countries . . . without some kind of engagement with Islamic movements.” Shadid recently wrote two terrific pieces (piece 1, piece 2) on the Mubarak regime’s repression of Egyptian democratic movements. “They represent such large constituencies,” he said, “but at this point you don't see any real signal from the Americans that they're willing to engage or have a desire to engage them.”

Click here to hear the show.

* * *

[More Washington Babylon]
[Contact Ken Silverstein]
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This is On Point on Hezbollah by Ken Silverstein, published Wednesday, March 21, 2007. It is part of Washington Babylon, which is part of Harpers.org.

So you think you live in a democracy?

The US and Britain are falling far behind in meeting the conditions of genuine democracy.

March 12, 2007 11:25 AM

Ronald Dworkin

Democracy doesn't mean just majority rule. There is no intrinsic value in the bare fact that more people favour one particular party or policy than another. Democracy is a value worth fighting for - it makes power legitimate - only when it means government through the majority on behalf of and for all the citizens. In a new book I argue that the conditions of genuine democracy are far from met in the US, the UK and other mature self-styled democracies.

These conditions can easily be set out in very abstract terms. Government must respect human rights, it must respect religious freedom and other forms of freedom of conscience, it must distribute its wealth so as to give everyone a fair stake in its economy and, above all, it must conduct its elections and other political procedures argumentatively so that each citizen is treated as someone worth convincing not just outvoting.

The United States fails by all these standards, and Britain does not do much better. We fail most dramatically in the character of our politics. Our politicians treat us as ignorant consumers; they entertain us with slogans and sound bites rather than arguments. In America, a very pessimistic explanation of this degraded politics is now fashionable. Americans are supposedly divided into two radically opposed cultures: the red culture that wants its religion public, drinks beer, lives in the middle, and votes Republican, and the blue culture that keeps its religion (if any) private, drinks white wine, lives on the coasts and votes Democratic. Genuine argument requires some common ground from which argument can start, and the conventional wisdom now holds that these two cultures are so fundamentally divided, in every respect, that there is no common ground. Politics is doomed to be war by other means.

I don't agree with this pessimistic conclusion. There are two very basic ethical principles that I believe are firmly part of western culture now and that are shared across the allegedly unbridgeable political divide. These hold, first, that it is objectively important that a human life, once begun, succeeds rather than fails, and, second, that each person has a non-delegable personal responsibility for identifying and pursuing success in his or her own life. If we all accept those basic principles, then we can reconstruct political argument as an argument about which political policies pursue the most attractive interpretation of these basic ethical requirements.

I think we need a distinctly liberal interpretation, which includes an understanding of human rights that makes our treatment of many terrorist suspects a violation of those rights. There are two general models of religion and politics - a choice between a religious state that tolerates dissent and a secular state that tolerates religion - and I believe that the basic principles, properly understood, require the secular state. To this end, I have explored a scheme for judging whether the level of a community's redistribution of its wealth through taxation is legitimate - in my view taxation in the United States and in Britain is illegitimately low.

The quality of political debate in the United States and Britain could be improved by, for example, a mandatory course in contemporary political issues in all secondary schools in which the most divisive issues are discussed against the background of the best rival arguments. This is the kind of argument our countries now lack.

Ronald Dworkin will be talking about his new book, Is Democracy Possible Here?, on Wednesday 14th March in discussion with Charles Moore, at The Newsroom, Guardian and Observer Archive and Visitor Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA. Doors open at 7pm for 7.30pm.

If you would like a ticket please email rsvp@guardian.co.uk by Tuesday 13th March. Tickets will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

Democracy or Liberty

A MINORITY VIEW
BY WALTER E. WILLIAMS
RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2007, AND THEREAFTER

Does democracy really deserve the praise it receives? According to Webster's Dictionary, democracy is defined as "government by the people; especially: rule of the majority." What's so great about majority rule? Let's look at majority rule, as a decision-making tool, and ask how many of our choices we would like settled by what a majority likes.

Would you want the kind of car that you own to be decided through a democratic process, or would you prefer purchasing any car you please? Ask that same question about decisions such as where you live, what clothes you purchase, what food you eat, what entertainment you enjoy and what wines you drink. I'm sure that if anyone suggested that these choices be subject to a democratic process, you'd deem it tyranny.

I'm not alone in seeing democracy as a variant of tyranny. James Madison, the father of our Constitution, said that in a pure democracy, "there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual." At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said, " . . . that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy." John Adams said, "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." Chief Justice John Marshall observed, "Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."

Our founders intended for us to have a limited republican form of government where rights precede government and there is rule of law. Citizens, as well as government officials, are accountable to the same laws. Government intervenes in civil society only to protect its citizens against force and fraud but does not intervene in the cases of peaceable, voluntary exchange. By contrast, in a democracy, the majority rules either directly or through its elected representatives. The law is whatever the government deems it to be. Rights may be granted or taken away.

Clearly, we need government, and that means there must be collective decision-making. Alert to the dangers of majority rule, the Constitution's framers inserted several anti-majority rules. In order to amend the Constitution, it requires a two-thirds vote of both Houses, or two-thirds of state legislatures, to propose an amendment, and requires three-fourths of state legislatures for ratification. Election of the president is not done by a majority popular vote but by the Electoral College.

Part of the reason for having two houses of Congress is that it places an obstacle to majority rule. Fifty-one senators can block the wishes of 435 representatives and 49 senators. The Constitution gives the president a veto to thwart the power of 535 members of Congress. It takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress to override the president's veto.

In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison wrote, "Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." That's another way of saying that one of the primary dangers of majority rule is that it confers an aura of legitimacy and respectability on acts that would otherwise be deemed tyrannical. Liberty and democracy are not synonymous and could actually be opposites.

A Confused US in the Middle East

Editor's note: I am moving over to the other blog(also see new articles below).
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Feb 14, 2007

Loss of US prestige as a super power and its growing image of being an anti-democratic, anti-Islamic regime are increasingly damaging for the Bush administration, argues Abdul Ruff Colachal.


Energy resources -- and not democratic issues -- constitute the focus of US foreign policy, especially in West Asia today. The United States, the most influential power in the world with which countries across the continents seek strategic partnership, is also the most worried nation today because of aggressive foreign policy of an arrogant President leading a failed anti-terror war in Middle East to control its vast energy resources. The horrors of "anti-terror wars" in Afghanistan and Iraq have once again reminded the Americans of earlier US failures. George W. Bush unveiled a new military strategy of enhancement and now is being routinely condemned as one of the worst Presidents ever and his Iraq policy no longer enjoys the support of a large swathe of the American establishment.

Cruel killing of Saddam did cause a slur on the format of the US diplomacy once hailed as genius when the former President Ford withdrew the US forces from Vietnam. Neither the assassination of the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein without fair trial, nor the backlashes of invasions of Islamic nations in recent times have made President Bush to change the course of US policy. President Bush, a supporter of neoconservative line of thinking, is still reluctant to revise his views on US national interest, in spite of a weakening US power and influence as well as domestic anger against the US-led war in Middle East.

The situation in West Asia demands immediate corrective steps to rescue the USA from the hostile battle fields. Relegation of diplomatic efforts to sidelines pushed President Bush to be one of the most worried men on the earth today, and the USA itself feels let down by its responsible leaders. By displaying arrogance through their external pursuits in many parts of the world, President Bush and advisers have brought even the USA to the brim of disorder. The war on terror has tarnished the image of the world’s only super power. The so-called liberators have assumed the role of occupiers in Middle East.

Following debacle in Iraq and Afghanistan, the neo-conservatives, like President Bush in world arena, suddenly did find themselves isolated and embattled and were confined to the sidelines. A confused US President directed his forces to Somalia killing innocent civilians in searching for the so-called suspected terrorists. This explains the nature of aggressive foreign as well as the pro-rich domestic policy, including tax cuts regime of the Bush administration. Obviously, the neoconservatives with almost full sway over the decisions of President Bush just don’t permit that to happen.

The Republican Party's rule in USA owes much to the neocons for their opinion of "containment" and wars in its external behavior and well being of the well-to-do on domestic scene. The die hard neocons decline to reckon that the failed US foreign policy doctrines ended up in a sort of confused militarism and useless diplomacy that has marked its dealings with North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Somalia. If the main justification for Nixon's Vietnam War was to prevent the spread of communism, the U.S. defeat then did not prove that point. The war reversals in 1970s made President Ford to flee disgracefully, restrained the USA from stretching itself too far and wide beyond its capacity and thus USA disengaged itself from the world affairs until the collapse of the USSR. End of Cold war, however, rekindled the US desire to showcase its military superiority in action. The neoconservatives hatched plans for "regime change" in West Asia. But actually, precisely for energy and economic reasons the Middle East remains one of the main areas, where the USA has focused its attention requiring military conflicts.

As the neocons misread global trends, President Bush has clearly overlooked the Vietnam experience of the USA and continued invasions and threatening postures causing misunderstanding with its other Western partners. The resultant failure of US aggressive policy in West Asia seems to have created embarrassment for the US-European relations as well. The Bush administration's embrace of unilateralism not only provoked the Iraq-Afghanistan disaster but also hastened American decline. The policy failure in Middle East could also signal decline the case globally as well. Tragic murder of Saddam has complicated US relations with European states, France and UK in particular, while. China and Russia had opposed the ghastly killing. Switch over to Somalia or the tactics of threatening Iran is no solution for current failures and that cannot save President Bush in any way.

The neo-conservatives under Bush believed that the world was ripe for a huge expansion of American power and influence. The CIA and Pentagon networks charted plans of subduing the world by employing concepts like democracy, regime change, WMD, axis of evil, etc. Threat perceptions generated by the CIA-Pentagon network kept the NATO ties fairly intact. And the world is being terrorised. US double speak on disarmament has generated enough suspicion in the world, but Washington went ahead with strengthening its power the world over. This in turn resulted in the US led forces occupying the countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. But now the forces are unable either to quit or to annex them as many other countries have done under similar situations in the past. The arrival of the new UN chief, Ban Ki Moon has not made any shift in US policy in West Asia, but only encouraged the Pentagon to pursue its destructive external policies.

Neoconservatives, therefore, don't do nuance. Their position is crystal clear: what is happening in the Middle East is an Islamist-Israeli war, part of the wider conflict between Islamist "totalitarianism" and liberal "democracy" and moderate Islam. To fight this war, the US has to confront not just terrorist networks but the states that are anti-American.That all anti-Islamic forces should be fighting against Islamic nations that are anti-US/Israel. Thus, Israel is dealing with Hamas and Hezbollah, so America should be going after Syria and Iran, which are Israel's enemies but also the enemies of the US. Accordingly, the US should, as soon as possible, launch a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, which would weaken the regime and put the country on the road to regime change.

Neocons make no concessions on that account and they want the Bush administration to do what they dictate. Loss of US prestige as a super power and growing image of being an anti-democratic, anti-Islamic regime are increasingly damaging for the Bush administration. The neocons guide the policy formulations of the Bush administration. Active, shuttle and aggressive diplomacy by USA to garner support of the Arabs for its Iran invasion having failed miserably, the Americans have reasons to believe that the Bush administration would rest finally. No, the neocons believe that the United States should not be ashamed to use its unrivaled power – forcefully if necessary – to promote its values around the world. Some even speak of the need to cultivate a US empire. Neoconservatives believe modern threats facing the US can no longer be reliably contained and therefore must be prevented, sometimes through preemptive military action. Ideology of neocons has remained the basics of philosophy of the Republican Party and has strong supporter in CIA, the Pentagon and the US government.

However, the Bush administration creates the impression that the President deviates from the neocons and executes only the moderated version of the extreme position taken by them who argue for quick invasion of Iran for controlling its energy resources before Russia might get through with the OPEC version of Gas regime. Even with opposition of the democrats to his Middle East policy, Mr. Bush still avoids moving towards the Iraq Study Group (ISG) position and go for, albeit gradual, withdrawal of troops. The plan by the USA-Israel combine to invade Iran would further seek terrible consequences for US. Both the Democrats and Republicans increasingly project US supremacy as the main goals in world politics .His double game only strengthens the neocons’ position of invading Iran as quickly as possible.

History of the USA has not taught Bush any serious lessons as he is still keen to invade Iran, by ignoring the key recommendations of the ISG report to involve Iran and Syria in any Iraqi settlement, including the return of the Golan Heights to Syria and to seek a new agreement between Israel and Palestine are still under vague scrutiny of the Bush administration. G.W. Bush cannot in fact help establish any New Middle East or collective global security. A reckless leader can lead his country to terrible destiny. Apart from US-Israel-UK nexus, most of the economic powers might still accept joint operations against select Islamic nations world wide. Unlike President Ford who gracefully retreated from a dangerous Vietnam War to save US prestige from further erosion, President Bush with his refusal to withdraw forces even after the poll reversals as well as a resistant Congress, has brought the US to the verge of being an insulted nation. The Democrats find it extremely torturous to defend the Bush strategy in West Asia and refuse to cooperate to send extra troops to Iraq.

USA is against a multi-polar world. Unipolarity suits USA to advance its global interests. By shelving unilateralism, the USA would have to share its influence with regional powers like Russia, China and the EU, Iran, India and Syria, but by continuing the confrontational policy, the Pentagon would advance its national interest. Both Russia and China stipulate that the US must act according to the UN rules. Sharing energy resources in Central Asia cannot be replicated in this explosive Middle East region any more. Such a scenario may well mean that the key alliance that has shaped the Middle East since 1956 between USA and Israel under UK mediation could even be increasingly downgraded and, if Iran is invaded, would ultimately be destroyed, besides its devastating consequences for US and Israel.


Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal is a Research Scholar at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Bill Moyers': For America's Sake

Related

Discovering What Democracy Means. Bill Moyers. February 12, 2007

"The conservative movement stands intellectually and morally bankrupt while Democrats talk about a "new direction" without convincing us they know the difference between a weather vane and a compass. The right story will set our course for a generation to come."

The US says it is fighting for democracy - but is deaf to the cries of the Iraqis

Related

" Chomsky was wrong about Walt and Mearsheimer last year. He was wrong because he does not seem to have a sociocultural or psychological bone in his body, but tends to (fudging that one; I haven't read him) see everything in Marxist terms, always talking about the corporations. And so he would finger Cheney's evil Halliburton backstory, ignoring the fact that Cheney also had a long AEI backstory, in bed with neocon intellectuals who obviously influenced him (his wife worked there, too), and whom he then moved into the White House en masse, and whom he and Bush then listened to; and Chomsky thereby immunizes a powerful ethnic-religious lobby of any role in the Iraq disaster."
---

Noam Chomsky

Published: 11 February 2007

There was unprecedented élite condemnation of the plans to invade Iraq. Sensible analysts were able to perceive that the enterprise carried significant risks for US interests, however conceived. Phrases thrown in by the official Presidential Directive from the standard boilerplate about freedom that accompany every action, and are close to a historical universal, were dismissed as meaningless by reasonable people. Global opposition was utterly overwhelming, and the likely costs to the US were apparent, though the catastrophe created by the invasion went far beyond anyone's worst expectations. It's amusing to watch the lying as the strongest supporters of the war try to deny what they very clearly said.

On the US motives for staying in Iraq, I can only repeat what I've been saying for years. A sovereign Iraq, partially democratic, could well be a disaster for US planners. With a Shia majority, it is likely to continue improving relations with Iran. There is a Shia population right across the border in Saudi Arabia, bitterly oppressed by the US-backed tyranny. Any step towards sovereignty in Iraq encourages activism there for human rights and a degree of autonomy - and that happens to be where most of Saudi oil is.

Sovereignty in Iraq might well lead to a loose Shia alliance controlling most of the world's petroleum resources and independent of the US, undermining a primary goal of US foreign policy since it became the world-dominant power after the Second World War. Worse yet, though the US can intimidate Europe, it cannot intimidate China, which blithely goes its own way, even in Saudi Arabia, the jewel in the crown - the primary reason why China is considered a leading threat. An independent energy bloc in the Gulf area is likely to link up with the China-based Asian Energy Security Grid and Shanghai Cooperation Council, with Russia (which has its own huge resources) as an integral part, and with the Central Asian states (already members), possibly India. Iran is already associated with them, and a Shia-dominated bloc in the Arab states might well go along. All of that would be a nightmare for US planners and their Western allies.

There are, then, very powerful reasons why the US and UK are likely to try in every possible way to maintain effective control over Iraq. The US is not constructing a palatial embassy, by far the largest in the world and virtually a separate city within Baghdad, and pouring money into military bases, with the intention of leaving Iraq to Iraqis. All of this is quite separate from the expectations that matters can be arranged so that US corporations profit from the vast riches of Iraq.

These topics, though high on the agenda of planners, are not within the realm of discussion, as can easily be determined. That is only to be expected. These considerations violate the fundamental doctrine that state power has noble objectives, and while it may make terrible blunders, it can have no crass motives and is not influenced by domestic concentrations of private power. Any questioning of these Higher Truths is either ignored or bitterly denounced, also for good reasons: allowing them to be discussed could undermine power and privilege.

There is another issue: even the most dedicated scholar/advocates of "democracy promotion" recognise that there is a "strong line of continuity" in US efforts to promote democracy going back as far as you like and reaching the present: democracy is supported if and only if it conforms to strategic and economic objectives. For example, supporting the brutal punishment of people who committed the crime of voting "the wrong way" in a free election, as in Palestine right now, with pretexts that would inspire ridicule in a free society. As for democracy in the US, élite opinion has generally considered it a dangerous threat which must be resisted. But some Iraqis agreed with Bush's mission to bring democracy to the world: 1 per cent in a poll in Baghdad just as the noble vision was declared in Washington.

On withdrawal proposals from élite circles, however, I think one should be cautious. Some may be so deeply indoctrinated that they cannot allow themselves to think about the reasons for the invasion or the insistence on maintaining the occupation, in one or another form. Others may have in mind more effective techniques of control by redeploying US military forces in bases in Iraq and in the region, making sure to control logistics and support for client forces in Iraq, air power in the style of the destruction of much of Indochina after the business community turned against the war, and so on.

As to the consequences of a US withdrawal, we are entitled to have our personal judgements, all of them as uninformed and dubious as those of US intelligence. But they do not matter. What matters is what Iraqis think. Or rather, that is what should matter, and we learn a lot about the character and moral level of the reigning intellectual culture from the fact that the question of what the victims want barely even arises.

The Baker-Hamilton report dismisses partition proposals, even the more limited proposals for a high level of independence within a loosely federal structure. Though it's not really our business, or our right to decide, their scepticism is probably warranted. Neighbouring countries would be very hostile to an independent Kurdistan, which is landlocked, and Turkey might even invade, which would also threaten the long-standing and critical US-Turkey-Israel alliance. Kurds strongly favour independence, but appear to regard it as not feasible - for now, at least. The Sunni states might invade to protect the Sunni areas, which lack resources. The Shia region might improve ties with Iran. It could set off a regional war. My own view is that federal arrangements make good sense, not only in Iraq. But these do not seem realistic prospects for the near-term future.

US policy should be that of all aggressors: (1) pay reparations; (2) attend to the will of the victims; (3) hold the guilty parties accountable, in accord with the Nuremberg principles, the UN Charter, and other international instruments. A more practical proposal is to work to change the domestic society and culture substantially enough so that what should be done can at least become a topic for discussion. That is a large task, not only on this issue, though I think élite opposition is far more ferocious than that of the general public.

Adapted from an interview for Z Net with Michael Albert, published tomorrow in 'The Drawbridge'. Noam Chomsky's latest book is 'Failed States' (Hamish Hamilton, June 2006; Penguin Books, March 2007)

U.S. Empire Slides Toward Coup, Bankruptcy in `Blowback' Sequel

By Michael Glennon

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- In Chalmers Johnson's unrelentingly grim view, today's dire global conditions are largely the fault of an arrogant, increasingly militarized U.S. bent on expanding its global empire.

If, as you read the preceding sentence, you find yourself nodding in agreement, you may well admire ``Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.'' If you prefer a more nuanced and evenhanded consideration of U.S. responsibility for the world's woes, Johnson's arguments will sound overheated.

For an Asia specialist who taught at the University of California for 30 years, Johnson sounds surprisingly like Michael Moore. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, in his view, has become the ``private army'' of the ``Boy Emperor from Crawford, Texas.'' America doesn't have allies; it has ``satellites.'' The U.S. Air Force has become an ``overlord of the globe,'' and the whole country is headed toward a possible military coup or, more probable in Johnson's view, bankruptcy.

Johnson appears to welcome such an outcome. ``We will have to learn what it means to be a far poorer nation and the attitudes and manners that go with it,'' he says in this final piece of the trilogy on the American empire that began with his bestselling ``Blowback.''

There's no denying that President George W. Bush and other U.S. policymakers, past and present, have much to answer for. ``Nemesis'' reiterates a sadly familiar list of shameful misdeeds committed by American leaders or at their behest.

Damning Record

Johnson recalls the manipulation of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq; the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib; ``extraordinary renditions'' of some terror suspects and the mistreatment of those held at Guantanamo Bay; CIA complicity in coups in Iran and Chile; and criminal behavior by U.S. troops stationed in overseas military bases -- the ``all- encompassing imperial `footprint.'''

Unfortunately, Johnson undercuts his often compelling arguments with selective use of supporting evidence, occasional logical lapses and a chronic use of hyperventilating language. Consider these assertions on the very first page of his book:

``Arrogant and misguided American policies have headed us for a series of catastrophes comparable to our disgrace and defeat in Vietnam or even to the sort of extinction that befell our former fellow `superpower,' the Soviet Union,'' he writes. ``Such a fate is probably by now unavoidable.''

Inevitable Collapse?

Johnson sees signs of rot everywhere. In today's America, he asserts, constitutional checks and balances are in tatters. Government power is concentrated in an imperial presidency protected by the CIA. Congress is corrupt, addicted to lobbyists' money and pork-barrel spending. The judiciary is cowed. Unchecked militarism has spawned a war economy that will inevitably collapse.

For Johnson, no historical comparison is too extreme. The slavish devotion of White House officials to presidential prerogatives reminds Johnson of how Chinese communists deferred to Mao Zedong. He applies Hannah Arendt's description of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann as a ``desk murderer'' to Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

The U.S. today, ``like the Roman Republic in the first century BC, is threatened by an out-of-control military- industrial complex and a huge secret government,'' Johnson writes. Rome's Republic, he reminds us, was destroyed and replaced by the ultimately unsustainable Roman Empire. Something similar might be in store for the U.S., he warns.

What About Nancy?

Though readers already prone to agree with Johnson may be amused, his rhetorical flourishes are likely to distract -- and alienate -- others.

What does the future hold? There is some hope, Johnson says, if Americans, like the British after World War II, come to terms with the inherent weaknesses of an imperial strategy, ``and keep our democracy by giving up our empire.''

Yet Johnson doesn't place much faith in the potential for political change, writing that he can't imagine ``any president or Congress'' defying the interests of the overpowering military-industrial complex. It makes you wonder if he has ever met Nancy Pelosi.

``Nemesis'' is published by Holt (354 pages, $26.00).

(Michael Glennon is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this review: Michael Glennon at glennon.michael@gmail.com .

Last Updated: February 9, 2007 00:12 EST

They've forgotten what democracy is for: The US media is gripped by election fever but fails to discuss the issues

Obsessed by personalities, they've forgotten what democracy is for

The US media is gripped by election fever - but discusses the candidates' highs and lows rather than the real social issues

Gary Younge in Washington
Monday February 5, 2007
The Guardian

"You want to run for president?" asked Frank Bruni in his book Ambling into History. "Here's what you need to do: Have someone write you a lovely speech that stakes out popular positions in unwavering language and less popular positions in fuzzier terms. Better yet if it bows to God and country at every turn - that's called uplift. Make it rife with optimism, a trumpet blast not just about morning in America but about a perpetual dazzling dawn. Avoid talk of hard choices and daunting challenges; nobody wants those. Nod to people on all points of the political spectrum ... Add a soupcon of alliteration. Sprinkle with a few personal observations or stories - it humanises you. Stir with enthusiasm."

Watching the contenders for the Democratic party nomination at the Washington Hilton this weekend during the party's winter meeting was to see Bruni's formula applied with precision (though he might have added: "Have millionaire backers, be tall, married and able-bodied" - it is unlikely the wheelchair user FDR would have been elected in the era of mass television).

The candidates were each allowed seven minutes, 30 seconds of theme music, and 100 poster-waving fans, to lay out their stall for the new American century. Each one spoke of how the nation's historic mission as a beacon of liberty, justice and opportunity throughout the globe, had been traduced by the Bush administration. There was nothing bad enough you could say about the Iraq war, the budget deficit or the state of healthcare. There was also nothing concrete that most of the candidates would say about what they would do to fix them. With little of substance on offer, delivery was everything. Barack Obama, who delivered beautifully, called for an end to cynicism in American politics. That's a lot of work for just seven minutes.

Americans, such demanding consumers in every other aspect of their lives, curiously expect little from their political leaders. They hold the principle of democracy dear; but the purpose of democracy remains elusive. The notion that "the people shall govern" is the cornerstone of American political identity - even if the nonchalance with which they watched Bush steal the 2000 election revealed a disturbing reluctance to defend it. Yet the idea that elections should be the mechanism for effecting real change barely seems to register - which is why it was relatively easy for Bush to get away with robbery.

The weekend before November's midterms, for example, I walked up the Las Vegas Strip asking people if they thought the coming elections mattered. Roughly one in five either did not know the elections were taking place or had no intention of voting. Yet precisely 100% said they thought the elections mattered. This dislocation is not particular to the US. For all its inadequacies, America's political culture has proved far more responsive to opposition to the war or corruption than Britain's. But both the popular attachment to democratic ideals and the general ambivalence to democratic outcomes are more intense, making the discrepancy more pronounced.

Everybody knows that, if counted (a significant if), their vote will make a difference to who is actually elected. But few expect that whoever they elect will really make any difference to the issues they care about. And so voting takes on a ritualistic quality. Like Independence Day or Thanksgiving, it marks a date on the calendar not for changing America's politics, but for celebrating its promise.

Whether one participates or not seems less important than the fact of the event itself. The consensus view of November's elections is that voters turned their back on the war and the Bush agenda and opted instead for a new course in favour of bipartisanship and troop withdrawal. But the truth is that most of them turned their back on the elections. The fact that, at only 42%, this was the highest midterm turnout for 36 years is merely an indication of how entrenched this condition has become. The so-called Gingrich revolution of 1994 was won with just 38.8% of the vote. In the words of Gil Scott-Heron: "The first thing I want to say is: mandate, my ass."

The point here is not that there is no difference between the two main parties but that the difference is insufficient to make a significant impact on the lives of large numbers of Americans. The problem is not that people don't want or need change - the poorer you are, the less likely you are to vote - but that they have long since given up on the idea that voting is the way to get it.

The future of the country was supposed to hinge on the outcome of the 2004 presidential election. But somehow the issues of poverty, racism and infrastructural decay that were evident in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina nine months later just never came up. By the time the midterms arrived, little over a year later, Katrina had somehow become irrelevant again.

It's not difficult to see why. Elections are big business. Last year the parties spent $2bn on ads alone. Throw in the fees for thousands of lobbyists, consultants and fundraisers and the electoral-industrial complex starts to develop a momentum of its own. Hillary Clinton, who faced only token opposition in a Senate race she won by 30 points, still lavished $27,000 on valet parking and $13,000 on flowers. The people who provide this money have healthcare, housing and decent schools for their kids. They pay the pipers and name the tune.

The mainstream media dances dutifully. Reporters somehow never encounter non-voters, instead constructing a country hotly debating the issues and weighing up the candidates. Obsessed by polls and personalities, they have a surreal fixation about who is up and who is down, with little indication of why we should care. They have barely digested the results of one election before they move on to devour the next. The morning after the midterms, with the fate of the Senate in the balance, CNN already had a banner along the bottom of its screen that read "America votes 2008". New York magazine hit the stands with a picture of Hillary Clinton on the cover and the words: "And now the real race begins".

And so in the Washington Hilton the permanent campaign that transforms American politics into a never-ending soap opera continues. Four years ago a rank outsider, Howard Dean, made his name at this event with an anti-war speech that transformed the dynamics of the campaign. This year he wielded the gavel as the leader of the Democratic National Committee and everybody is against the war.

It's almost two years until the presidential elections. We can only hope that between now and then progressive movements will again see the candidates' opportunism as their opportunity and bring their influence to bear on whoever decides to run. In the meantime, with little of substance to debate, the media are reduced to discussing strategy and style. Can the Democrats reclaim the west? Should they abandon the south? When will Obama's star fade? Are Hillary's positives greater than her negatives? Is America ready to elect a Mormon, a black man or a white woman? Enjoying the race, and ignoring what lies beyond the finish line.

g.younge@guardian.co.uk

Gary Younge is a Guardian columnist and feature writer based in the US. He was formerly the paper's New York correspondent. His most recent book is Stranger in a Strange Land: Encounters in the Disunited States; he is also the author of No Place Like Home, published in 1999.