SOCIALIST UNITY

Monthly Review

 Barack Obama is a fanatical believer in the imperialist capitalist system imposed by the United States on the world. “God bless the United States,” he ends his speeches.

Some of his acts wounded the sensibility of world opinion, which viewed with sympathy the African-American candidate’s victory over that country’s extreme right-wing candidate. Basing himself on one of the worst economic crises that the world has ever seen, and the pain caused by young Americans who lost their lives or were injured or mutilated in his predecessor’s genocidal wars of conquest, he won the votes of the majority of the 50% of Americans who deign to go to the polls in that democratic country.

Out of an elemental sense of ethics, Obama should have abstained from accepting the Nobel Peace Prize when he had already decided to send 40,000 soldiers to an absurd war in the heart of Asia.

The current administration’s militarist policies, its plunder of natural resources and unequal exchange with the poor countries of the Third World are in no way different from those of its predecessors, almost all of them extremely right-wing, with some exceptions, throughout the past century.

The anti-democratic document imposed at the Copenhagen Summit on the international community – which had given credit to his promise to cooperate in the fight against climate change – was another act that disappointed many people in the world. The United States, the largest issuer of greenhouse gases, was not willing to make the necessary sacrifices, despite the sweet words of its president beforehand.

It would be interminable to list the contradictions between the ideas which the Cuban nation has defended at great sacrifice for half a century and the egotistic policies of that colossal empire.

In spite of that, we harbor no antagonism toward Obama, much less toward the U.S. people. We believe that the health reform has been an important battle, and a success of his government. It would seem, however, to be something truly unusual, 234 years after the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776, inspired by the ideas of the French encyclopedists, that the U.S. government has passed [a law for] medical attention for the vast majority of its citizens, something that Cuba achieved for its entire population half a century ago, despite the cruel and inhumane blockade imposed and still in effect by the most powerful country that ever existed. Before that, after almost half a century of independence and after a bloody war, Abraham Lincoln was able to attain legal freedom for slaves.

On the other hand, I cannot stop thinking about a world in which more than one-third of the population lacks the medical attention and medicines essential to ensuring its health, a situation that will be aggravated as climate change and water and food scarcity become increasingly greater in a globalized world where the population is growing, forests are disappearing, agricultural land is diminishing, the air is becoming unbreathable, and in which the human species that inhabits it – which emerged less than 200,000 years ago; in other words, 3.5 million years after the first forms of life emerged on the planet – is running a real risk of disappearing as a species.

Accepting that health reform signifies a success for the Obama government, the current U.S. president cannot ignore that climate change is a threat to health, and even worse, to the very existence of all the world’s nations, when the increase in temperatures – beyond the critical limits that are in sight – is melting the frozen waters of the glaciers, and the tens of millions of cubic kilometers stored in the enormous ice caps accumulated in the Antarctic, Greenland and Siberia will have melted within a few dozen years, leaving underwater all of the world’s port facilities and the lands where a large part of the global population now lives, feeds itself and works.

Obama, the leaders of the free countries and their allies, their scientists and their sophisticated research centers know this; it is impossible for them not to know it.

I understand the satisfaction in the presidential speech expressing and recognizing the contributions of the congress members and administration who made possible the miracle of health reform, which strengthens the government’s position vis-à-vis the lobbyists and political mercenaries who are limiting the administration’s faculties. It would be worse if those who engaged in torture, assassinations for hire, and genocide should reoccupy the U.S. government. As a person who is unquestionably intelligent and sufficiently well-informed, Obama knows that there is no exaggeration in my words. I hope that the silly remarks he sometimes makes about Cuba are not clouding his intelligence.

In the wake of the success in this battle for the right to health of all Americans, 12 million immigrants, in their immense majority Latin American, Haitian and from other Caribbean countries, are demanding the legalization of their presence in the United States, where they do the jobs that are the hardest and with which U.S. society could not do without, in a country in which they are arrested, separated from their families and sent back to their countries.

The vast majority of them immigrated to Northern America as a consequence of the dictatorships imposed on the countries of the region by the United States, and the brutal policy to which they have been subjected as a result of the plunder of their resources and unequal trade. Their family remittances constitute a large percentage of the GDP of their economies. They are now hoping for an act of elemental justice. When an Adjustment Act was imposed on the Cuban people, promoting brain drain and the dispossession of its educated young people, why are such brutal methods used against illegal immigrants of Latin American and Caribbean countries?

The devastating earthquake that lashed Haiti – the poorest country in Latin America, which has just suffered an unprecedented natural disaster that involved the death of more than 200,000 people – and the terrible economic damage that a similar phenomenon has caused in Chile, are eloquent evidence of the dangers that threaten so-called civilization, and the need for drastic measures that can give the human species hope for survival.

The Cold War did not bring any benefits to the world population. The immense economic, technological and scientific power of the United States would not be able to survive the tragedy that is hovering over the planet. President Obama should look for the pertinent data on his computer and converse with his most eminent scientists; he will see how far his country is from being the model for humanity he extols.

Because he is an African American, there he suffered the affronts of discrimination, as he relates in his book, The Dreams of My Father; there he knew about the poverty in which tens of millions of Americans live; there he was educated, but there he also enjoyed, as a successful professional, the privileges of the rich middle class, and he ended up idealizing the social system where the economic crisis, the uselessly sacrificed lives of Americans and his unquestionable political talent gave him the electoral victory.

Despite that, the most recalcitrant right-wing forces see Obama as an extremist, and are threatening him by continuing to do battle in the Senate to neutralize the effects of the health reform, and openly sabotaging him in various states of the Union, declaring the new law unconstitutional.

The problems of our era are far more serious still.

The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international credit agencies, under the strict control of the United States, are allowing the large U.S. banks – the creators of fiscal paradises and responsible for the financial chaos on the planet – to be kept afloat by the government of that country in each one of the system’s frequent and growing crises.

The U.S. Federal Reserve issues at its whim the convertible currency that pays for the wars of conquest, the profits of the military industrial complex, the military bases distributed throughout the world and the large investments with which transnationals control the economy in many countries in the world. Nixon unilaterally suspended the conversion of the dollar into gold, while the vaults of the banks in New York hold seven thousand tons of gold, something more than 25% of the world’s reserves of this metal, a figure which at the end of World War II stood at more than 80%. It is argued that the [U.S.] public debt exceeds $10 trillion, more than 70% of its GDP, like a burden that will be passed on to the new generations. That is affirmed when, in reality, it is the world economy which is paying for that debt with the huge spending on goods and services that it provides to acquire U.S. dollars, with which the large transnationals of that country have taken over a considerable part of the world’s wealth, and which sustain that nation’s consumer society.

Anyone can understand that such a system is unsustainable and why the wealthiest sectors in the United States and its allies in the world defend a system sustained only on ignorance, lies and conditioned reflexes sown in world public opinion via a monopoly of the mass media, including the principal Internet networks.

Today, the structure is collapsing in the face of the accelerated advance of climate change and its disastrous consequences, which are placing humanity in an exceptional dilemma.

Wars among the powers no longer seem to be the possible solution to major contradictions, as they were until the second half of the 20th century; but, in their turn, they have impinged on the factors that make human survival possible to the extent that they could bring the existence of the current intelligent species inhabiting our planet to a premature end.

A few days ago, I expressed my conviction, in the light of dominant scientific knowledge today, that human beings have to solve their problems on planet Earth, given that they will never be able to cover the distance that separates the Sun from the closest star, located four light years distant, a speed that is equivalent to 300,000 kilometers per second – if there should be a planet similar to our beautiful Earth in the vicinity of that sun.

The United States is investing fabulous sums to discover if there is water on the planet Mars, and whether some elemental form of life existed or exists there. Nobody knows why, unless it is out of pure scientific curiosity. Millions of species are disappearing at an increasing rate on our planet and its fabulous volumes of water are constantly being poisoned.

The new laws of science – based on Einstein’s theories on energy and matter and the Big Boom theory as the origin of the millions of constellations and infinite stars or other hypotheses – have given way to profound changes in fundamental concepts such as space and time, which are occupying theologians’ attention and analyses. One of them, our Brazilian friend Frei Betto, approaches the issue in his book La obra del artista: una vision holística del Universe (The Artist’s Work: a Holistic View of the Universe), launched at the last International Book Fair in Havana.

Scientific advances in the last 100 years have impacted on traditional approaches that prevailed for thousands of years in the social sciences and even in philosophy and theology.

The interest that the most honest thinkers are taking in that new knowledge is notable, but we know absolutely nothing of President Obama’s thinking on the compatibility of consumer societies with science.

Meanwhile, it is worthwhile, now and then, to devote time to meditating on those issues. Certainly human beings will not cease to dream and take things with the due serenity and nerves of steel on that account. It is a duty – at least for those who chose the political profession and the noble and essential resolve of a human society of solidarity and justice.

Fidel Castro Ruz
March 24, 2010
6:40 p.m.

I recently read Ben Pimlott’s magisterial biography of Harold Wilson. It is very revealing about how the realities of office can completely derail a government’s agenda. As Wilson took office in 1964 he discovered that the economy was in much worse state than the outgoing Tory government had admitted, and there was an immediate sterling crisis. What is more, the catastrophe they inherited concerning the racist rebellion in Rhodesia dominated the time and energy of the Wilson government, and continually threatened it due to the popularity of the Rhodesia rebels among the British public.

Wilson’s government was derailed, the National Plan for economic growth was still born due to the panic measures to protect Sterling’s exchange rate, and the welfare and egalitarian programmes that had been predicated on the plan were compromised, which inevitably meant a rupture with the trade unions.

The important thing to understand is the way that the various problems for the government restricted its room for manoeuvre. Devaluing Sterling might have saved the Economic Plan, but only at the expense of introducing austerity measures, and also creating a massive diplomatic crisis with former colonies, like India, Egypt and Pakistan who held their national reserves in Sterling.

Wilson was perhaps the most consummate British politician of the last century, a natural coalition builder, with good personal skills, intellectual, and brilliant at achieving compromise with political opponents. It is interesting to compare him with that other behemoth of Twentieth century British politics, Margaret Thatcher, the unbending revolutionary. Thatcher was able to transform the political landscape through having a clear political vision that could both inspire and repel, and also because she precipitated confrontational solutions to problems that forced people to take sides; with a shrewd understanding that class interest and loyalty would force wavering Tories to back her once she had entered the fight, even against their better judgement.

The paradox of course is that the type of Labour politician who might have been as dominating a transformational revolutionary as Thatcher, could not have won a general election in 1964; could not have pulled together the Bevanites and the Croslandites into a united cause; could not have repositioned Labour as a national party espousing modernity, pulling the new technocratic and managerial classes behind it while at the same time still retaining the loyalty and enthusiasm of millions of trade unionists. The very skills that allowed Wilson to succeed in winning in 1964 to bring Labour back out of the wilderness were the character attributes that determined that he would seek compromise and coalition building, and avoid confrontation in response to the crises that beset his administration.

It is hard not to see some parallels in Obama’s first year. Obama’s genius as a politician is his genuine talent at negotiation and compromise, and his ability to neutralise opposition by making strategic concessions. This has been apparent with the tortured progress of the health care bill, and with the economic stimulus package.

The Obama administration inherited wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: wars not of his own making. He inherited the whirlwind of the worst recession in living memory; an economic meltdown not of is own making. He inherited a position of international distrust of American foreign policy and diplomacy: a situation not of his own making. The American political system is dominated by powerful lobbyist interests for big business that skews the politic debate; a situation that Obama did not create, but has to navigate.

He has also had to operate in an incredibly polarised and partisan political environment, where the Republican party seems to have become dominated entirely by the hard right, and where normal bi-partisan conventions in Congress have been suspended in favour of trench warfare by the GOP.

And we have to remember that the instruments at Obama’s disposal are the institutions of the Empire. Not only does American civil society have its own dynamic that constrains the actions of the Presidency, but so do the civil service, judiciary, armed forces and diplomatic corps.

Yesterday’s loss of the Senate seat in Massachussets to the Republicans is a bitter blow, and Obama shows his political shrewdness with his judgement. President Obama told ABC news: “The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. “People are angry and they are frustrated. Not just because what has happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”

Scot Brown has won this seat by a combination of right wing populism, and also an anti-politics vote of people just frustrated by the political system, and who want to punish whoever is in office.

This creates a very real problem for the Health care bill, because the versions passed in the House of Representatives and in the Senate are not the same, and it was essential that the House version prevailed, as too many concession were granted in the Senate to insurance companies, and the private health care lobby. The Democrats no longer have the 60% super-majority to force the changes before it receives Presidential assent. The alternative of passing it as it is, and then making piecemeal amendments through trench warfare using their simple majority, will paralyse the rest of the administration’s efforts.

Overall Obama has done a good job in the last year, within the limitations of the position he found himself in, and the mission he set himself. He has raised the expectation of change, and compromise and conciliation has reached the limits of what it can achieve.

But his mandate from millions of working and middle class Americans, of all races, creeds and colours, was to transcend the constitutional stalemate, not to succumb to it. He is however not the man who will lead a confrontation, he never was. The value of Obama was that he raised the expectation that change and improvement is necessary and achievable.

The question is now simply posed for the millions of ordinary Americans who invested hope in that change. Do they abandon their President now, or do they rise to the challenge? Mass campaigning to carry through radical change can still push the Republicans and private health care lobby back. Do the millions who have been inspired by Obama taking climate change seriously simply sit back and watch the Republicans and the oil lobby block change? The radical mass base that Obama built needs to mobilise itself in support of the agenda they believed in and voted for.

by Byron DeLear, courtesy of Politics in the Zeros

After a long arduous journey of being half-way there, the Senate finally passed a health care insurance reform bill on Christmas Eve.

How is it that throughout the entire health care debate the issue of job creation and economic stimulus has not been brought up?

The simple fact is, adding 30 million people into the health care system will translate into an abundance of economic activity and opportunity for millions of Americans: jobs such as doctors, nurses, technicians, administrators and new jobs in research, information technology, medicine — not to mention the positive impact all this fiscal solvency will have on supporting industries and professions.

Not to be a sidewalk superintendent, but it has been frustrating to see this law-making process unfold when obvious political messaging such as “Medicare for All” or “Health Care for New Jobs” has been missing from the Democratic playbook. Yes, I’m aware of Von Bismarck’s famous observation, “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made,” but even so, does anyone else feel as if this campaign was waged with one arm tied behind our back?

Job creation and rebuilding our economy is the prevailing social issue of the day; it is a political Holy Grail and it makes me wonder why this aspect of health care reform has not been brought to light. Adding ten percent of the entire US population into a system of continuous preventive care will undoubtedly lead to job and infrastructure growth in an industry that definitively embodies the best way to improve the general welfare of our national family.

In short, a trillion dollar ten-year health care reform package serves double purpose — not only does it begin to take the steps necessary to provide accessible and affordable health care for everyone, but it also acts as a massive jobs program and stimulus to uplift an economy struggling to recover.

It is beyond me why these two political dots have not been connected; they are so interrelated, and it seems that emphasizing the economic benefits of health care reform would have had a favorable impact by bringing many of the vocal naysayers — at least — into a place of neutrality; it may have even brought in a few Republicans to do the unthinkable, vote “yes”.

Personally, I like and admire president Barack Obama; and I think that the context for progressive change in the USA and the world is improved by him being President, compared to the real world alternatives.

However, what a sick joke giving him the Nobel Peace Prize, while US and NATO troops are continuing to pursue an unwinnable and indefensible war in Afghanistan.

 My nominee as someone who really deserves a peace prize is Malalai Joya, the Afghan woman MP (author of “Raising My Voice”) who has bravely stood up and defied the warlords and the chauvinist gangsters on both sides of the war

by President Barack Obama

Tonight, I return to speak to all of you about an issue that is central to that future, and that is the issue of healthcare.

I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last. It has now been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first called for healthcare reform. And ever since, nearly every president and Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, has attempted to meet this challenge in some way. A bill for comprehensive health reform was first introduced by John Dingell, Sr., in 1943. Sixty-five years later, his son continues to introduce that same bill at the beginning of each session. Our collective failure to meet this challenge year after year, decade after decade, has led us to the breaking point. Everyone understands the extraordinary hardships that are placed on the uninsured who live every day just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy. These are not primarily people on welfare. These are middle class Americans. Some can’t get insurance on the job. Others are self-employed and can’t afford it since buying insurance on your own costs you three times as much as the coverage you get from your employer.

Many other Americans who are willing and able to pay are still denied insurance due to previous illnesses or conditions that insurance companies decide are too risky or too expensive to cover. We are the only democracy, the only advanced democracy on Earth, the only wealthy nation that allows such hardship for millions of its people.

There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage. In just a two-year period, one in every three Americans goes without health care coverage at some point. And every day, 14,000 Americans lose their coverage. In other words, it can happen to anyone.

But the problem that plagues the health care system is not just a problem for the uninsured. Those who do have insurance have never had less security and stability than they do today. More and more Americans worry that if you move, lose your job or change your job, you’ll lose your health insurance, too. More and more Americans pay their premiums, only to discover that their insurance company has dropped their coverage when they get sick, or won’t pay the full cost of care. It happens every day.

One man from Illinois lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found that he hadn’t reported gallstones that he didn’t even know about. They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it. Another woman, from Texas, was about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company cancelled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne. By the time she had her insurance reinstated, her breast cancer had more than doubled in size. That is heartbreaking, it is wrong, and no one should be treated that way in the United States of America. (more…)

President Obama has given his first major speech on relations between the United States and the Muslim world. Birmingham Councillor and Respect party leader Salma Yaqoob gave the following response:

‘President Obama’s call for a ‘new beginning’ in relations between the United States and the Muslim world is very welcome. The absence in his speech of any bellicose threats to Iran stands in stark contrast to his predecessor, George W Bush, as do his comments about the ‘intolerable’ situation facing the Palestinians.

“However, in view of the damage done to the United States’ reputation across the Muslim world, actions not words will be required to really mark a new beginning. Many Muslims in Britain are of South Asian origin and are alarmed at how the US intervention in Afghanistan is also destabilising Pakistan.

The sooner there is progress to redress the injustice of the Palestinians and end the occupation of Afghanistan, the quicker a new chapter can be written.’

Just two weeks into the job and we have already seen decisive moves to stop trials at Guantanamo bay, with a commitment to closing the prison camp there. We have seen an aggressive rebuff to the conservative stance of the previous Bush administration by striking down the ban on federal funds going to organisations that provide abortions. Not a bad start.

And with some skill, the economic recovery plan has been steered through Congress, committing £500 billion in economic stimulus.

The question here is not whether the plan is sufficient or whether the detail is exactly right. The issue we must grasp is that Obama’s presidency represents a sea-change from the economic orthodoxy of the last twenty or even thirty years. Government intervention is back in fashion, and that opens the door to a political discussion of what sort of intervention, and for whose benefit.

In terms of British politics it is essential that we get the message across that David Cameron and his free-market fanatics of the Tory Party are dangerously out of step with the modern world of Barack Obama, and must not be trusted any where near government. The trade unions need to be noisily banging on the door at Downing Street and demanding stronger and bolder intervention to secure jobs.

I think Phil struck the right tone on his blog yesterday:

“Barack Obama’s inauguration speech wasn’t bad was it? Pushing beyond the surface rhetoric, it seems Obama is determined to meet the massive expectations placed in him. Invoking liberal American values throughout, he played up the USA as a collective project, but one that has to meet a changing world. He marked a Keynesian tone, declaring that while markets are good for generating wealth and enhancing freedom, they have to be watched constantly - the prosperity of the few does not guarantee the prosperity of the many. But above all, his talk of big challenges clearly mark the return of the big project. Over the coming weeks we will finally see how the Obama administration will go about remaking America.”

The contrast between Tony Blair taking office in 1997 is striking. The first move of the incoming New Labour administration was to deregulate the Bank of Engand, moving government economic policy even further towards neo-liberalism than had been the case under the outgoing Conservative government of John Major. Careful warnings that the New Labour government would stick to the previous Tory governments spending limits were designed to stress contuniuity and dampen expectations.

But Obama’s first act has been to freeze military trials at Guantanamo bay, and the election pledge to close the prison camp at the base is certain to be kept.

The inauguration speech was not just breezy rhetoric. Although there were sensible caveats about the scale of the diffculties to overcome there were clear statements of intent to move America in a more progressive, more humane and more just direction. As Bob Morris has pointed out, the USA is currently swept by a wave of optimism. There is a mass popular belief that society needs to change, and that it can change. In that climate every grassroots campaign and community based struggle will feel it has history on its side; every shopfloor militant and trade union activist can argue more confidently for solidarity and collectivity because the worship of greed and profits has been discredited; every member of an oppressed minority can walk a little taller because the President of the most powerful nation on Earth has overcome prejudice and adversity, and the swagger of the bigots will be that much less confident.

Don’t underestimate the significance of President Obama assuming office. The landslide election victory was a root and branch rejection of everything that George W Bush and the Republican party symbolises to millions of Americans. Obama was elected amid scenes of enthusiasm, as millions of the poorest, the most disadvantaged and more oppressed in the USA used their democratic power to remove the most powerful man in the world from office, and crushingly reject the warmonger, John McCain, and and the religious conservative, Sarah Palin, with whom the Republicans hoped to continue the neo-con project.

The electors of America  put in George W Bush’s place someone promising greater social justice, more compassion, more intelligence and less war.  There is great expectation that the corner has been turned. For a generation or more, working Americans (the so-called middle class) have become accustomed to things getting worse. For the first time in decades, the expectation is now that things can get better.

 Hope is an infectious thing. Of course there will be those business leaders who will do everything they can to ensure that it is business as usual. Perhaps Barrack Obama himself is less radical than some of his supporters expect. But what Obama has shown is that the impossible can become the possible. Every campaign for social justice, every trade unionist, every community activist can point to the fact that change is possible, and their activity, their struggles and their campaigns can make a difference, and the mood for change is so strong that it has swept a black man, a liberal, and an opponent of the war in Iraq into the White House.

Everyone in America who wants greater social justice should ask themselves whether they are able to use the opportunity of an Obama presidency to make America a  fairer, more just country. Yes they can.