The Venezuela Embassy released this comment:
President Chávez expressed his hope that relations between the two countries would change to President Obama. “Eight years ago with this same hand I greeted Bush. I want to be your friend,” President Chávez said upon receiving a greeting from President Obama. President Obama then thanked the Venezuelan President.
On several occasions, President Chávez has stated that the only thing he wants from the United States is respect for Venezuela and its sovereignty. Later, Chavez gave Obama book by the great Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano, which the NY Times dismissively characterized as a “tract.”
As for Cuba, expectations are high for a deeper change. (If Sadat could go to Jerusalem, why can’t Obama go to Havana?) Expect to see mucho push back from the militantes of Miami who seem, like the Anglo Right, to be represented by extremist radio talk show hosts.
Does this mean that US policy and US interests in Latin America have changed. Not at all. Change starts with small steps. This is a change in tone, a first step signaling the possibility of more. I am sure that the wingnuts on the right will go ballistic. First, Obama “bows” to the Saudi King. Now Castro and Hugo. What’s next? Battle lines are being drawn. At the same time, the New York Times features a front page story on cautious and conciliatory Obama has been. It is called “Despite Major Plans, Obama Taking Softer Stands.”
“The thing we still don’t know about him is what he is willing to fight for,” said Leonard Burman, an economist at the Urban Institute and a Treasury Department official in the Clinton administration. “The thing I worry about is that he likes giving good speeches, he likes the adulation and he likes to make people happy.” So far, he said, “It’s hard to think of a place where he’s taken a really hard position.”
Another example cited by critics, his willingness to meet harsh critics of the US but unwillingness to attend a UN Conference on Racial Discrimination denounced by Israel.
These equivocations and cautiousness is not not noticed by the Right in the US that is demonizing him as an enemy. Two days earlier, as part of their contrived “tax revolt”, the Right was denouncing him as a socialist and traitor. A right-wing talk show host even blasted Michelle Obama as “trash” in the White House.
Leave it to the Left to miss some rather key developments.
Officially the Left Forum understands there’s a change in the weather at least. On its webs ite, it explains its current mission:
“The 2009 Left Forum poses the question, could we be at a historic juncture in the evolution of American power and politics? There is a palpable sense that the end of the Bush Presidency might just be such moment. There are signs of deep and lasting changes might be possible, and even underway, in the political firmament. The economy is teetering on what could be the deepest downturn since the Great Depression. Politically, the Obama campaign and presidency have raised the spirits of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, but in doing so it has also exposed the party to a defection by this very wing if Obama settles for business as usual.”
Well said, but by conditioning and its outsider in the wilderness instincts, the Left remains suspicious of power, and willing to always believe the worst in the name of dialectical analysis.
Usually, it is that attempt at objective analysis that is the Left’s strength—the willingness to speak truth to power and the determination to struggle against war, racism, injustice etc. But even one of its leading lights, Adolph Reed, an original thinking black intellectual and professor was both hip and self-critical in his talk at the opening panel. There was an acknowledgment that by its style and insular practice, the left had marginalized itself, had no real access to the American people, and didn’t know how to organize.
[I was tempted to encourage one and all present to see my new film, “People’s President” to see how an unknown politician organized himself into power but I am sure I would have been “tarred and feathered” for the suggestion that people who claim to know so much have anything to learn.]
Reed, himself, is critical of many black leaders including Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan and has no desire to become more high profile, having written: “Our energy should go into mobilizing politically, not worshiping at the shrines of media-generated intellectual stars with no constituencies.”
Writing in The Progressive, this professor at the University of Pennsylvania is critical of all Democratic politics too; “The Democratic candidates who are anointed as “serious” are like a car with a faulty front-end alignment: Their default setting pulls to the right. They are unshakably locked into a strategy that impels them to give priority to placating those who aren’t inclined to vote for them and then palliate those who are with bromides and doublespeak. When we complain, they smugly say, “Well, you have no choice but to vote for me because the other guy’s worse.”
Reeds’ provocative comments were a bit out of place given the self-congratulatory spirit of the event in the sense that just having a Left Forum is a major undertaking in itself, involving reaching out to hundreds of academics, and funders.
The first speakers that I heard on opening night did have a lot to say and were with hearing.
First, marxist economist Rick Wolf, who has a lecture on film called “Capitalism Hits The Fan” from the Media Education Project, summarized a neoconomic analysis that explains how wages for workers in America rose from 1870 to l970 even as productivity soared.
Capitalism Hits the Fan: A Marxian View from UVC-TV 19 on Vimeo.
Workers then had to work twice as hard, exhausting themselves and getting deeper and deeper in debt to keep consumption up. He explained how businesses took advantage of the situation, outsourcing jobs and enriching shareholders and executives and creating a speculative market, which has now burst. He calls for more workplace democracy, not just saving the banks and a rotting capitalist order.
Next up, Arlie Hochschild brilliantly showed how this top-down economy devastated families, hurt children and at the same time propagandized the public with suspicion and hatred of government, There is a long history behind last weeks “tea bag” protests of well organized antipathy to government. This she says is changing thanks to the implosion of the so-called “free market” and growing hostility to Wall Street and big business.
There is certainly a need for a Left Forum and a vital left wing but unless and until it finds a way to define itself, create some unified political presence, communicate its message in a coherent way and organize a base, it is, unfortunately, going to stay on the outside and become increasingly shrill. That’s my fear—but also my experience over many years of attending these events.
One would have thought that the Forum’s main achievement might be in fostering a sense of community but its party Saturday night competed against a last minute plenary that pushed the talk into the night. The party had no food –”we blew it on the snacks, Danny” - -I was told at the Brecht Forum where forumites straggled in, wandered around and soon split. Maybe it picked up later in the night but one had the sense that there is no notion of movement building here besides speechifying and intellectual argument.
I went back for more “punishment” and learning on Sunday.
The first panel had a great turnout at l0 AM on Sunday. It was called, “Nationalize The Banks.” I thought the case for nationalization would be made in the spirit of Karl Marx (whose number 6 demand, we were told, in the Communist Manifesto) was for the public control over credit and banking.
To my surprise, only one of the speakers made a clear cut case for nationalization in the name of public control of the finance sector. Others weren’t so sure. Nomi Prins, an ex-banker turned writer, argued that there has to be a restructuring first–separation of investment banking from commercial banking ala the old Glass Steagell Act — explaining why government control of this complex mess could make it messier. There seemed to be lots of ambivalence about a takeover by our government, especially because the Obama strategy seems to be more concerned with saving a dysfunctional system than transforming it.
In the Q&A, I proposed the formation of a People’s Pecora Commission to investigate and popularize the reasons for our economic meltdown in the spirit of the teach-ins that helped build the anti-war movement. People seemed to like the idea, but I didn’t get a sense that anyone would follow up on it. I ran into Media Benjamin of Code Pink, an activists activistsbut she felt all we need to do is rally people behind a simple slogan to “break up the banks.” I didn’t agree….I think there needs to be more popular education on the issue.
The last panel I went to was about the origins of the crisis and there was lots of intellectual firepower. Doug Henwood, author of Wall Street and the Left Business Observer argued that the measures that the Obamacrats are taking will not work. Paul Mason, who reports for the BBC, reported on his talks with capitalists who see the collapse coming, and the think the old capitalist system is a goner. He cited Alan Greeenspan’s “revelation” that he was shocked when the greedsters on Wall Street did not regulate themselves in their own self interest. The brilliant News School Economist, Max Fraad Wolf, said there is no Main Street or Wall Street, that both got addicted to Consumption and debt economy, and that it will take many more TRILLIONS to try to put Humpty Dumpty together again. He explained how leverage wrecked the economy and warned that the government is now going after the FDIC. Finally, Professor/writer Robin Blackburn, who I first met when I was the LSE in London, provided a much needed global perspective arguing that inequality within nations and between nations contributed to the crisis, especially the exploitation of Chinese workers. He made the case for socialist reforms.
I had a case of intellectual euphoria, with this overload of information and analysis but was quickly brought down to earth when my car, parked nearby in what I thought was a legal spot was towed–the street signs had been turned around–and I spent hours calling police pounds that don’t answer, trekked to one pound that a cop told me to go to only to discover that it is closed on Sunday and then learned it is probably somewhere in Brooklyn assuring that my Monday will be hell. That will teach me. This happened across the street from City Hall run by former Wall Streeter Mike Bloomberg now spending gadzillions to win re-election all in the name of how efficient and citizen friendly he’s made local government… Just another day in the naked city.
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten