The Empire 374

'Overextension: our American way of life is not sustainable

Written by Chris Clugston

Editor's Note: Chris Clugston is the kind of independent researcher and commentator who has the corporate and academic background to put numbers together. Fortunately, it is for the big picture. Few environmentalists are willing to tackle overpopulation, but Clugston actually quantifies it. -JL

Through our relentless pursuit of the American Dream and our blind adherence to our American way of life, we have become overextended -- we have exceeded America’s capacity to sustainably support our existing population at our current standard of living. That is, the natural resources and economic resources required to support our ever-increasing consumption levels by our ever-expanding population are simply not available; nor is the capacity of our habitat sufficient to assimilate the ever-increasing amounts of waste disgorged by our ever-expanding population.
To compound our predicament, we have become "irreversibly" overextended -- we are past the point of "painless" return. We have so consistently and drastically overshot our sustainable consumption and population levels that returning to sustainable levels will necessarily involve significant lifestyle disruptions -- living standard degradation, population level reduction, and the possible loss of sovereignty; there can be no "soft landing."
Note: We are temporarily able to maintain prosperity and growth, despite our overextended condition, because the adverse effects associated with our continuously accumulating ecological and economic indiscretions -- which enable our current prosperity and growth -- have yet to be felt. We are essentially living on borrowed time.
Quantifying American OverextensionIn order to fully appreciate the extent to which America is overextended and to understand why our American way of life is not sustainable, it is necessary to quantify American overextension; that is, to compute the difference between our current consumption and population levels, and the consumption and population levels at which America could subsist sustainably and self-sufficiently going forward into the future.
One method by which these metrics can be determined is through the use of "ecological footprint" data. Ecological Footprint
The Global Footprint Network [GFN] defines ecological footprint as "a resource management tool that measures how much land and water area a human population requires to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb its wastes under prevailing technology." Thus, a country’s ecological footprint equals the earth’s surface area required to produce the resources consumed by its population and to assimilate the waste generated by its population, over the course of a year.
For example, by 2003 GFN calculations, Iraq had a per capita ecological footprint of 2.5 acres, China 4.0 acres, India 1.7 acres, UK 13.8 acres, world average 5.4 acres -- and America 24.0 acres.
This means that, on average, approximately 24 acres of planet earth’s surface area are required to produce the resources consumed and to assimilate the waste generated by every American each year. Interestingly, America’s "biocapacity", the domestic US surface area available to produce resources for consumption and to assimilate resulting waste, is only 11.6 acres per capita—leaving an "ecological deficit" of 12.4 acres per capita.
This means that over half of America’s current subsistence -- production of the resources that we consume and assimilation of the waste that we generate -- is enabled through excessive consumption; that is, by "importing biocapacity, liquidating existing stocks of ecological capital, or allowing wastes to accumulate and ecosystems to degrade" [quote from GFN website].
In fact, America has been running increasingly large annual ecological deficits since the 1960sUS Ecological Footprint

The ecological footprint analysis conducted by Redefining Progress [RP], an organization that defines ecological footprint in somewhat broader terms, is even more alarming. RP calculated America’s 2001 per capita ecological footprint to be 267 acres and our per capita biocapacity to be 50 acres, leaving a per capita ecological deficit of 217 acres.
This indicates that over 80% of America’s current subsistence is enabled by excessive consumption!

How does ecological footprint data translate into sustainable US consumption levels and population levels? America’s 2006 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was approximately $13.2 trillion—which can be considered a financial proxy for our "current consumption level". At the end of 2006, America’s population stood at approximately 300 million, which can be considered our "current population level".

Using GFN Data
According to the GFN ecological footprint analysis, America’s biocapacity, our domestic surface area available to produce resources for consumption and to assimilate resulting waste, currently provides for only 48% of our actual annual subsistence; 52% of our annual subsistence is enabled by importing biocapacity, drawing down resource reserves, and degrading our habitat.
Therefore, in order to live sustainably and self-sufficiently within the constraints imposed by our domestic US biocapacity, while maintaining an average living standard roughly comparable to that which we enjoy today, we would have to reduce our aggregate annual consumption level and total population level by approximately 52%.'

Lees verder: http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=124

De Commerciele Massamedia 158

De door Obama pas benoemde stafchef van het Witte Huis, Rahm Emanuel, komt uit een milieu waarin zionistisch terrorisme als een acceptabel en zelfs noodzakelijk instrument werd gezien om het Groot Israel mogelijk te maken, zoals aan het embleem van de terroristische Irgoen te zien is. Wat achtergrond informatie:

'The commanders of the Etzel and Lehi gangs, Menahem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir eventually became Israeli prime ministers. None of them expressed any remorse, and Menahem Begin lived the last days of his life with a panoramic view of Deir Yassin from his house. No Nuremberg judges, no vengeance, no penitence, just a path of roses all the way to a Nobel Peace prize. Menahem Begin was proud of the operation, and in his letter to killers he congratulated them for fulfilling their national duty. "You are creators of Israel’s history", he wrote. Yitzhak Shamir was also pleased that is helped to achieve his dream: to expel the nochrim (non-Jews) from the Jewish state.' Lees verder: http://www.mediamonitors.net/shamir12.html

En Noam Chomsky schreef: 'In 1943, current Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir wrote an article entitled "Terror" for the journal of the terrorist organization he headed (Lehi) in which he proposed to "dismiss all the 'phobia' and babble against terror with simple, obvious arguments." "Neither Jewish morality nor Jewish tradition can be used to disallow terror as a means of war," he wrote, and "We are very far from any moral hesitations when concerned with the national struggle." "First and foremost, terror is for us a part of the political war appropriate for the circumstances of today, and its task is a major one: it demonstrates in the clearest language, heard throughout the world including by our unfortunate brethren outside the gates of this country, our war against the occupier." As has been widely observed in Israel, the British occupation was far less repressive than Israel's rule in the occupied territories and faced a much more violent resistance.
British philosopher Isaiah Berlin recalls that Chaim Weizmann, first president of Israel and considered one of the saintly figures of the national movement, did not think it morally decent to denounce either the acts [of Jewish terrorism] or their perpetrators in public... he did not propose to speak out against acts, criminal as he thought them, which sprang from the tormented minds of men driven to desperation, and ready to give up their lives to save their brothers from what, he and they were equally convinced, was a betrayal and a destruction cynically prepared for them by the foreign offices of the western powers.36
The archives of the mainstream Zionist resistance group, Haganah, contain the names of 40 Jews killed by Menachem Begin's Irgun and Lehi. Yitzhak Shamir's personal assassination of a Lehi associate is a famous incident. The official Irgun history, while recalling with admiration many acts of terror against Arab civilians, also cites the murder of a Jewish member who, it was feared, would give information to the police if captured. Suspected collaborators were a particular target. The Haganah Special Actions Squads carried out "punitive actions" against Jewish informers. A Haganah prison in Haifa contained a torture chamber for interrogation of Jews suspected of collaboration with the British. In a 1988 interview, Dov Tsisis describes his work as a Haganah enforcer, "following orders, like the Nazis," to "eliminate" Jews interfering with the national struggle, "particularly informers."'

Lees verder: http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199112--02.htm

Maar deze informatie zult u niet snel via de westerse commerciele massamedia vernemen. Het past niet in de officieel goedgekeurde context.

Obama 36

Obama, met zijn stafchef Rahm Emanuel, de zoon van een Israelische terrorist, die de nieuwe president tot belangrijkste medewerker in het Witte Huis heeft benoemd.

Stel dat Obama als belangrijkste medewerker in het Witte Huis de zoon van een Palestijnse terrorist had aangewezen, hoe hadden dan de Nederlandse commerciele massamedia bericht?

Juist, die zouden hebben bericht dat deze functionaris de zoon van een Palestijnse terrorist was. Dat zou namelijk als opmerkelijk feit zijn gepresenteerd, immers de stelregel is: man bijt hond. Maar nu, Rahm Emanuel, de toekomstige stafchef van het Witte Huis, die bepaalt wie Obama straks mag spreken, is de zoon van een joods-Israelische terrorist, die zich aangesloten had bij de Irgoen. Even voor de duidelijkheid:

'The Irgun was the armed expression of the nascent ideology of Revisionist Zionism founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky. He expressed this ideology as "every Jew had the right to enter Palestine; only active retaliation would deter the Arabs and the British; only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state".[1] Initially, a central part of their efforts included attacks against Palestinian Arabs,[2] but it increasingly shifted to attacks against the British. Some of the better-known attacks by Irgun were the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946 and the Deir Yassin massacre (accomplished together with the Stern Gang) on 9 April 1948. In the West, Irgun was described as a terrorist organization by The New York Times newspaper,[3][4] and by the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry.[5] Irgun attacks prompted a formal declaration from the World Zionist Congress in 1946, which strongly condemned "the shedding of innocent blood as a means of political warfare". Zie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun

Nu de vraag, waarom meldden de Nederlandse commerciele massamedia dit niet? Antwoord: omdat dit niet past in het toegestane beeld. Joods-Israeli's kunnen geen terroristen zijn, die kunnen alleen slachtoffers van terroristen zijn, Arabische terroristen. Daarom leest u geen woord hierover in bijvoorbeeld de Volkskrant van vanochtend.

Obama 35

Na de overspannen Nederlandse persreacties nu wat serieuze Amerikaanse journalistiek.

November 6, 2008
From Hope to Change
The Big Leap
By JOHN CHUCKMAN

Already in the press there have been stories of plans to dampen the public’s expectations of Obama. The expectations are undoubtedly beyond being satisfied by any human being.
Obama’s bright face, a keen intelligence at work in every expression, represents the greatest hope for change in America since Franklin Roosevelt. Even Kennedy, with all his gifts, did not come close. After all, Kennedy was a harsh Cold Warrior, a wild risk-taker, and he was connected to some of the most unsavory subcultures in America.
But Obama is the inheritor of one of the bleakest legacies ever in a modern
state: the meltdown of Wall Street and its severe international consequences, two costly unresolved wars, war crimes against other countries, and waves of ill-will towards America for its international torture gulag.
All these, plus the problems that have bedevilled the United States for decades, matters like poor health care, the dismal state of public schools, or the immense and pervading corruption of America’s politics, something to which the Bush people made their own contributions, including vote fraud and severe abuse of power, especially by the Vice President.
Bush gave Americans oppressive laws, unprecedented war profiteering, and a tax system now twisted and warped by giveaways to the wealthy. That is not a left-wing view: going back to Jefferson, it was understood that excessive accumulation and inheritance of wealth were dangerous to a republic. The United States has moved towards a society of inherited influence and entitlement, its establishment coming to resemble increasingly the ancien régime of 18th century France.
The Bush excesses largely do not upset the establishment since they were aimed at protecting that very establishment. John McCain, establishment by blood and marriage, dropped his boyish outsider stage act during the campaign, revealing himself unimaginative and unresponsive - indeed a tired, unappetizing serving of Bush leftovers.
And that was deadly to McCain’s hopes. Despite the establishment’s influence, ordinary Americans do once in a while manage to vote against it.
Without eight years of Bush incompetence and abuse pushing ordinary Americans to anger and embarrassment, Obama’s victory would not have been possible.
Any effort to correct these problems is against the great weight of America’s establishment, further strengthened by eight years of abusive benefits, always the beneficiaries and keepers of America’s unacknowledged imperialism. Winning a national election is one thing, but turning that victory into a long series of Congressional votes is quite another. All those Congressmen and Senators, in both parties, need constant injections of cash to operate, and they do not get it through the populist mechanisms of Obama’s election campaign. The Congressmen will all face re-election in just two years.
And then there is a political party, Obama’s own, that has almost no genuine purpose left other than opposing Republicans for power, prestige, and patronage. It stands for nothing anymore, and some of its members could easily be interchanged with Republicans. Its voice was not heard against illegal war, against torture, against abuse, or indeed anything important in the last eight years.
Many, perhaps most, modern American presidents achieve little in altering American society, although they may do considerable damage abroad. Bush was an exception in that he did serious damage both at home and abroad, but the circumstances permitting him were unique: blind, insane fear over 9/11. The entire period since that event represents nightmarish over-reaction to a relatively minor threat.
Presidents generally achieve little domestic change because America’s Constitution was deliberately designed to make the office of the president a weak one. An American president with an opposition-filled Congress is a political eunuch, getting neither his appointments nor legislation nor treaties approved. Only in matters concerning disturbances in the empire will he invariably enjoy Congressional support.'

Lees verder: http://www.counterpunch.org/chuckman11062008.html

Obama 34

'Sonja heeft een nieuwe reactie op uw bericht "Obama 30" achtergelaten: Wat hebben Hans Jansen (de 'arabist') en Rahm Emanuel met elkaar gemeen? Ze wilden vroeger allebei balletdanser worden.Emanuel belongs to an orthodox Jewish congregation in Chicago and worked as a volunteer in Israel during the first Gulf War.The night after Clinton was elected, Emanuel was so angry at the president's enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting "Dead! . . . Dead! . . . Dead!" and plunging the knife into the table after every name. "When he was done, the table looked like a lunar landscape," one campaign veteran recalls. (Biografie Rolling Stone) Emanuel's vader, Benjamin Auerbach (later Benjamin Emanuel), is nog steeds een praktizerend kinderarts in Chicago. Hij was ook lid van de Irgun (Etzel). Op 17 september 1948 pleegde hij een geslaagde moordaanslag, onder leiding van Yitzhak Shamir, op de Zweed Folke Bernadotte (gezant van de UNO in Palestina) en de Franse kolonel André Sérot (militaire VN observateur). En wie weet wat de terroristische kinderarts nog meer uitgespookt heeft met deze militante zionistenclub. (op de website van de Irgun wordt nog steeds gepronkt met foto's van de aanslagen...)Is het niet merkwaardig, dat de zoon van een terrorist nu de vierde machtigste man in de VS (de wereld) is?Zou hij weten wat het Israëlische leger doet met de familieleden van Palestijnse militanten? En met hun huizen?En is het niet merkwaardig, dat je in zijn biografiën die nu in kranten verschijnen, ook de Nederlandse, daar helemaal niets over leest? Zo'n opmerkelijk feit?'

Opmerkelijk wel, maar merkwaardig niet! Dit soort informatie past niet in de officiele consensus met betrekking tot wat wel en niet bericht mag worden over Obama. Obama is een produkt dat uitermate knap verkocht is door professionals die inzagen dat het neoconservatieve systeem failliet was. Via de achterdeur wordt nu de machtige pro-Israel lobby weer het Witte Huis binnengeleid. De terroristen van de Irgun passen niet in het sprookjesbeeld van de 'eerste zwarte president van de VS.' Dus doen de media wat van hen verwacht wordt. Men verzwijgt de informatie over de Irgun. Overigens staat niet onomstotelijk vast dat dr. Benjamin Emanuel persoonlijk betrokken was bij de moordaanslag op graaf Bernadotte, voor zover ik kan zien.

Een tijdje geleden schreef ik dit: 'Jacob Israel de Haan was een joodse Nederlander die door zionisten in opdracht van de latere Israelische president Yitzhak Ben-Zvi werd vermoord, omdat hij te kritisch was over de zionistische politiek. Het Joods Historisch Museum in Amsterdam schrijft op zijn site het volgende: "vlak voor zijn geplande terugkeer naar Nederland werd de Haan, inmiddels activist voor de ultra-orthodoxie, vermoedelijk vermoord door zionistische joden. De moord op Jacob Israël de Haan was de eerste politieke moord in Palestina." Waarom staat hier "vermoedelijk"? Het is namelijk een bewezen feit... De politieke moord op De Haan is zorgvuldig onderzocht en beschreven in het boek De Haan: De eerste politieke moord in Palestina, door Shlomo Nakdimon en Shaul Mayzlish.[4] Nakdimon en Mayzlish verrichtten een diepgaand onderzoek naar de moord, en zij wisten de moordenaar te vinden, Avraham Tehomi, die destijds als zakenman in Hong Kong woonde… Tehomi (1903-1990) heeft nooit spijt van de moord gehad, zoals bleek uit een interview voor de Israëlische televisie met Nakdimon: "Ik heb gedaan wat de Hagana besloten had. En er werd niets gedaan zonder bevel van Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. (...) Ik heb geen spijt, want hij wilde ons hele zionistische idee verwoesten." Tehomi werd kort voor zijn dood ook geïnterviewd door Emile Fallaux voor een omvangrijke documentaire over De Haan voor de Nederlandse VPRO-televisie, Het eind dat niemand keren kan, waarin hij dit nog eens bevestigde… Avraham Tehomi was de oprichter van de joodse terroristische organisatie Irgoen, die aanslagen pleegden op Britse militairen en Palestijnse burgers.'

Je zou mogen verwachten dat dit een interessante Nederlandse invalshoek is voor onze commerciele massamedia. Nee dus.

'The King David Hotel bombing was a deadly bomb strike by the Irgun, a militant Zionist group, on the headquarters of the British Mandatory authorities of Palestine, located at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. The offensive was carried out on 22 July 1946 and was the deadliest attack against the British during the Mandate era (1920-1948).
Operating in disguise, Irgun members planted a bomb in the basement of the main building of the hotel, part of which housed the Mandate Secretariat and the British military headquarters. Telephoned warnings were sent to the main switchboard of the hotel, the Palestine Post newspaper and the French consulate[1][2], but no evacuation was carried out, giving rise to much controversy over the reasons why people were not cleared from the building. The ensuing explosion caused the collapse of the southwestern corner of the southern wing of the hotel. 91 people were killed and 46 were injured, with some of the deaths and injuries occurring in the road outside the hotel and in adjacent buildings.[1]'

Zie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

Er zijn talloze joods-Israelische politici die trots zijn op de terroristische achtergrond van de zionisten.

'Political Biography: Yitzhak Shamir
(b. Ruzinoy, Poland, 1915) Israeli; Foreign Minister 1980 – 3, 1984 – 6, Prime Minister 1983 – 4, 1986 – 92 Yitzhak Yezernitsky became a revisionist Zionist and emigrated to Palestine in 1935. There he resumed his interrupted legal studies and joined the Irgun terrorist group in 1937. With its most militant members, he broke away in 1940 to form the extremist terrorist group LEHY (Lohamei Herut Yisrael), under the leadership of Abraham Stern. He was party to its notorious attempts at alliance with Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the USSR and, after Stern's death in 1942, he led the fascistoid Stern Gang in its campaign of indiscriminate terrorism. Shamir continued his lethal career as head of Mossad's assassination unit between 1956 and 1964.' Zie: http://www.answers.com/topic/yitzhak-shamir

'Claim to Notoriety:
Begin's notoriety may be found in an extraordinary career that spanned terrorism to statesmanship to winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Many believe that the attacks carried out under Begin's leadership of a Jewish militia, the Irgun, helped hasten the British withdrawal from mandate Palestine, and the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel.
The labeling of Begin as a terrorist is based on his activities against the British government in Palestine in the mid-1940s. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the British who first labeled Begin a terrorist.' Zie: http://terrorism.about.com/od/groupsleader1/p/MenachemBegin.htm

De Israelische staat herdenkt zelfs de honderste geboortedag van de terrorist Avraham Stern, verantwoordelijk voor vele doden onder de Britten en Palestijnen. Over terrorisme zijn de zionisten nooit negatief geweest, tenminste zolang het hun eigen terrorisme betrof. Ze waren er zelfs trots op zoals onder andere uit dit bericht blijkt:

'Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Speech at the Special Knesset Session Marking 100 Years Since the Birth of the Late Avraham Stern (“Yair”)
Translation
29/01/2008

Madam Speaker,Honorable Minister,Members of Knesset,Yair Ben-Avraham Stern and Family,LEHI Veterans,Friends and Admirers of “Yair”,

Today, the Knesset honors the memory of Avraham Stern, “Yair”, fighter for the freedom of Israel, commander of the fighting underground, philosopher, poet and intellect, lover of his people and his country, zealous and passionate in his beliefs, desperately dedicated to his mission.
One hundred years have passed since “Yair” was born, but he only lived for 35 stormy years until he was murdered in the prime of his life, in cold blood, by an officer of the British secret police in a safe house in the Florentine neighborhood of Tel Aviv. On the monument erected in his memory by his comrades and subordinates on the way to Jerusalem, a line from his poem, “For You Are Sacred to Me, My Homeland!” is engraved:'

Zie: http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication/PMSpeaks/speechstern290108.htm

Nederland en Afghanistan 183

Een aanrader voor u en zeker ook voor mijn Nederlandse collega's die zelf geen onderzoek ter plaatse verrichten, maar wel allerlei meningen verkondigen.

'How We Lost the War We Won
A journey into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan
NIR ROSEN

• Embedded with the Taliban: Photos and commentary by Nir Rosen•

Video Interview:

Nir Rosen on his experience in Afghanistan

The highway that leads south out of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, passes through a craggy range of arid, sand-colored mountains with sharp, stony peaks. Poplar trees and green fields line the road. Nomadic Kuchi women draped in colorful scarves tend to camels as small boys herd sheep. The hillsides are dotted with cemeteries: rough-hewn tombstones tilting at haphazard angles, multicolored flags flying above them. There is nothing to indicate that the terrain we are about to enter is one of the world's deadliest war zones. On the outskirts of the capital we are stopped at a routine checkpoint manned by the Afghan National Army. The wary soldiers single me out, suspicious of my foreign accent. My companions, two Afghan men named Shafiq and Ibrahim, convince the soldiers that I am only a journalist. Ibrahim, a thin man with a wispy beard tapered beneath his chin, comes across like an Afghan version of Bob Marley, easygoing and quick to smile. He jokes with the soldiers in Dari, the Farsi dialect spoken throughout Afghanistan, assuring them that everything is OK.
As we drive away, Ibrahim laughs. The soldiers, he explains, thought I was a suicide bomber. Ibrahim did not bother to tell them that he and Shafiq are midlevel Taliban commanders, escorting me deep into Ghazni, a province largely controlled by the spreading insurgency that now dominates much of the country.
Until recently, Ghazni, like much of central Afghanistan, was considered reasonably safe. But now the province, located 100 miles south of the capital, has fallen to the Taliban. Foreigners who venture to Ghazni often wind up kidnapped or killed. In defiance of the central government, the Taliban governor in the province issues separate ID cards and passports for the Taliban regime, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Farmers increasingly turn to the Taliban, not the American-backed authorities, for adjudication of land disputes.
By the time we reach the town of Salar, only 50 miles south of Kabul, we have already passed five tractor-trailers from military convoys that have been destroyed by the Taliban. The highway, newly rebuilt courtesy of $250 million, most of it from U.S. taxpayers, is pocked by immense craters, most of them caused by roadside bombs planted by Taliban fighters. As in Iraq, these improvised explosive devices are a key to the battle against the American invaders and their allies in the Afghan security forces, part of a haphazard but lethal campaign against coalition troops and the long, snaking convoys that provide logistical support.
We drive by a tractor-trailer still smoldering from an attack the day before, and the charred, skeletal remains of a truck from an attack a month earlier. At a gas station, a crowd of Afghans has gathered. Smoke rises from the road several hundred yards ahead.
"Jang," says Ibrahim, who is sitting in the front passenger seat next to Shafiq. "War. The Americans are fighting the Taliban."'

Lees verder: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23612315/how_we_lost_the_war_we_won

Obama 33b

'Paul heeft een nieuwe reactie op uw bericht "Obama 31" achtergelaten: Michael Albert heeft een aardig fictief interview met Obama vanuit het jaar 2010 (2 jaar in functie). Het is geschreven vanuit de aanname dat de hoop van Obama's volgelingen op progressieve verandering gerealiseerd wordt. Alberts stuk is verhelderend in de schets die het geeft van wat werkelijke verandering zou betekenen. Meer nog is het verhelderend mbt hoe groot de de werkelijke afstand is tussen Obama en zelfs een begin van dergelijke verandering. De benoeming van Clinton-man Rahm Emmanuel is al een eerste koude douche... '

'An Interview I Would Love To Read
November 05, 2008

By Michael Albert Michael Albert's ZSpace Page Join ZSpace

Imagine it is January 2, 2011.

Imagine that Barack Obama has been President of the U.S. for two full years.

Finally, imagine also that the following interview with Obama takes place on prime time TV, as a way of situating what has occurred over those two years and also to foreshadow what is forthcoming.

And since this is all make believe, let's make believe the interviewer's name is Barb Walt.

I believe what follows is not an absolutely impossible scenario for all times, though I don't believe it will happen in the next two years. I don't believe Barack Obama will take office with the views that I here place in his mouth or with the courage to act on those views I attribute to him. But I could be wrong, and of course I hope I am, and more importantly, it could happen another time.

I know that a great many people, unlike me, believe that Obama is absolutely sincere about empowering the working people, women, minorities, and young people of America, even at the expense of those with wealth and power.

Against all evidence of Obama's own words, of the forces he is beholden to, of the inclinations of the "experts" he is welcoming into his administration, of the system preserving pressures he feels every day, and of past U.S. history - many people have an elated feeling that this man will transform the country. I fervently hope they are right, but think they are wrong. I offer this essay to indicate what I think would justify their outlook.

Obama will be transformative, or not.

That's a given, like it will rain tomorrow or not.

So...

Either: like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Barack Obama will be a man elected into office with major elite backing, who when he became President was only a sincere reformer, but who was then polarized by elite resistance and inspired by popular activism, to become much more.

Or: unlike Chavez but like every past American President, Obama will not evolve into holding more radical views, will not stand up to conforming pressures, and will not learn from activists, but will instead oppose us.

Since many Obama voters anticipate the former outcome, the imagined interview below reveals what it might be like if things turn out as they hope. It describes what having a radicalized president with great courage might be like.

But if the future holds no interview remotely like the one below, and no Obama transformation remotely like the one described, and no President-inspired uprising like that reported, and if instead Obama becomes an eloquent mainstream solidifier of elite stability, then it will mean Obama has fallen way short of his supporters' hopes, and it will mean it is incumbent on all who wanted a much more transformative outcome to keep pushing Obama's administration and to keep building the activist means to move forward even as Obama becomes more of an obstacle than an aid to the task.

Which way will it turn out?

Will Obama galvanize efforts to transform society including becoming a movement builder against elite opposition?

Or will Obama settle into office as a system sustainer, defending elite agendas with only modest (albeit important) variations from recent administrations?

We will see.

Below, we see what the transformative scenario might look like. My point is that we should push as hard as we are able to make the transformative path real, but we should also persist in our movement building even if Obama is more obstacle than ally.


Barb: Mr. President...

Barack: Barb, please, don't call me that - call me Barack. I think that "Mr. President" stuff is a throwback to Royal pomp. We should get beyond that...



Barb: Okay, sorry, Mr., er, Barack. To get started - I would like to understand your plans and hopes now, but also where you and the country have been over these past two years, and where you are now going. Can you start by telling us your broad goals as they were when you took office, two years ago?

Barack: Sure, Barb, I can summarize my aims as they were then...



Barb: Good, let's consider it a historical record. After the summary we can address recent changes. How about we start with health care?

Barack: It was my feeling when I took office that a society that doesn't provide health care for all citizens is dysfunctional. I mean, what would you say about a family that took care of some sick members, but told others, too bad, make do?

And if everyone in a family wanted to take care of all members, except an old curmudgeon granddaddy who said screw those who can't pay, clearly that old fuddy duddy's perverse opinion would be ignored, right?

So, by analogy, I felt we should treat all citizens like members of a diverse family, with everyone entitled to health care. And I felt if we raised the moral tone of the country, the curmudgeons opposing universal health care would be ignored.

I also knew health costs were climbing so fast the financial crisis we recently endured would be minor compared to the distributional crisis that would ensue if we left the health system in its prior condition. So I intended to ensure full coverage, but at a cost within our social means, by having everyone together take on the responsibility.

I intended to increase the number of caregivers, reduce their incomes to a sensible level, and in particular, put a low lid on pharmaceutical companies, health care facilities, or other involved firms profiting off disease.

I thought we should have vastly more clinics, too, because how else would people, and especially the poor, have easy access to timely and excellent care.

And, I have to say, I also always wondered, what the hell is the purpose of the incredible pressure that is put on interns? What logic justifies the debilitating hours they are forced to work? I thought that was no way to provide health care, much less to train capable, sensitive doctors, and you know, Michelle in her hospital work, had similar impressions, but I didn't know what we might do about it.

Lees verder: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/19345