By Simon Hoggart
When you actually see Barack Obama, it's startling how slight he is and how young he looks. I watched him arrive for a meeting in Philadelphia this week, and he had an anxious, fretful little smile, as if it were his first campaign speech. His ears stick out and his clothes hang loose. There's nothing glossy or plump about him. Most successful American politicians look well-fed on endorsements, campaign contributions and chicken dinners. He looks like a boy going to a job interview in his first suit.
Earlier in the week he had gone bowling, an attempt to make him seem like one of the guys. It hadn't worked. He did poorly - 37 points - and several balls ran into the channel beside the alley, or "gutter". In an election where the tiniest event is played and analysed endlessly on television, this was a gift to Hillary Clinton, who called for an end to gutter politics, and offered to settle the nomination in a bowling contest - her way of saying that she was the regular guy, and he was the nerdy fellow who can't even throw a bowling ball straight.
If it wasn't for the colour of his skin, the charge his opponents might make against Obama is that he is the latest in a long line of nerds chosen by the Democrats; policy wonks such as Dukakis and Gore, long on earnest proposals, short on personal appeal. That changes when he opens his mouth. In the past, most black American politicians have adopted the rhetoric and rhythms of the pulpit, voices swooping and rising, as if the larynx and the whole body were hurling themselves furiously at the topic. Barack is quieter. He doesn't sound like a preacher, but he is compelling. His speech patterns would be right for a lawyer summing up for the defence, in front of a jury allowed to react how it likes.
And react they do. They screamed and yelled and whistled and chanted. "Yes we can!" they shouted over and over. It's one of the Obama campaign slogans. Another is "Fired up! Ready to go!" Part of his schtik is to describe how he got that phrase from a little old lady early in the campaign when, tired and dejected, he had travelled to a town in South Carolina where he was met by 20 people. He'd been upstaged by the old lady chanting her slogan, and had started using it with his staff. Then he changes gear. "You see, one voice can change a room, it can change a city, it can change a state - and it can change a nation!" As the cheers grow he adopts the old trick of talking through the noise - it's almost impossible to hear him, but that's not the point. It means "what I have to say is so important, I can't even wait for you to calm down!"
There was far more raw enthusiasm than they'd shown for Hillary the previous day. Anywhere in America these days you'll see the people who love Barack love him as much as the people who hate Clinton hate her. The votes of indifferent people count as much as anyone else's, but there is no doubt who is most adored.
The speech is unabashed populism. With even the authorities now suggesting a recession is imminent, it would be hard to go any other way. He scarcely bothers to attack Hillary, and launches into John McCain, the Republican candidate presumptive. McCain has to be coupled with Bush, quite the most unpopular president for decades.
"McCain is offering the same as George Bush, putting the American dream out of reach for ordinary Americans." The administration is to blame for the crisis. "They didn't lift a finger, not until the pain being suffered in Main Street trickled up to Wall Street." He accuses McCain of wanting to occupy Iraq for 100 years - an exaggeration since McCain merely said some US troops might need to stay there.
Obama's finest hour was probably the speech last month after TV ran footage of the anti-American sermons of his pastor in Chicago, Jeremiah Wright. The speech, stripped down, can seem evasive. Wright was deeply mistaken about America, yet much of what he said was true. Black people are trapped in a cycle of continuing poverty. But so are many white people. The speech is moving and quietly emotional, thought-provoking without being provocative.
"God bless America!" he yells at the audience. Half an hour later he is in a market, dodging an importunate passer-by who wants a picture on his phone. The event is run several times on TV as if it showed him as a surly curmudgeon, avoiding the voters. To me he looked like that slightly bewildered young lad, wondering what he's let himself in for.
The Guardian, Friday April 4 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/04/barackobama.uselections2008
Article by Naomi Klein on the rise of disaster capitalism aka predatory capitalism after this.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:
Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 5:46 AM
Subject: [Multicul-Pluralism Grp] Canadian Jewish News coverage of Independent Jewish Canadian conference
Dear folks,
The following short item appeared on p.2 of this week's CJN, under "The News In brief":
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
New Group Formed
TORONTO — More than 100 left-wing Jewish activists from 18 different groups met March 28 to 30 in Toronto to form a network of "anti-occupation groups" that say they're seeking "real peace and justice in the Middle East." Convened by the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians, the meeting challenged the views of mainstream Jewish groups and the Harper government, who all "uncritically support the Israeli government's violations of international and humanitarian law," organizers said. Author Naomi Klein was keynote speaker.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians
Alliance de Canadien/nes juif/ves concerné/es
A C J C
acjc.info@yahoo.ca
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ACJC2006
acjc2006-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Jewish.conference@yahoo.ca
News/nouvelles & discussion List/e:
JUNITY-Canada-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
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in Italy two communist organisation
proletari comunisti-Pcm Italy
and
Communist Platform
have issued a common declaration and call about italian elections 13 avril
We call all the communist and revolutionary forces, the struggle
organizations, the class union organizations to subscribe the common
statement below:
In the past years the proletarians and people’s masses of Italy have
experienced centre-right governments lead by Berlusconi as well as
centre-left governments lead by Prodi and D’Alema, including the
“communist” parties [PRC and PdCI].
These governments attacked and worsened the conditions of live and work.
In these years we have undergone cut of the wages – also because of the
high cost of the livelihood; precariousness – result of the Biagi and
Treu laws; “white murders” before increasing profits; cut of the
pensions and social services before growing financial transfers for the
owners and military expenses. The toiling masses got poorer and poorer
while profits and financial gains grew up.
A reactionary restructuring process of the State and the society
advanced, in authoritarian and modern fascist forms that generalized
emergency laws, repression and a climate of police State.
The Moratti reform, that the Prodi's government has maintained, worsened
the conditions of the youth.
The condition of the women at the work and in the social life is more
and more under attack; led by the Vatican, a clerical-fascist attack
advances against the right of abortion and the self-determination of the
women.
The persecution of the communists, the proletarian and class
organization has gone on while the fascists have been protected and the
militant anti-fascists criminalized.
The racist laws against the migrants adopted by the Berlusconi
government have been essentially maintained under the Prodi’s
government, while aggressions and a climate of pogrom escalated.
The imperialist role of Italy in Afghanistan and Lebanon, in
alliance/subordination with US, intensified. Italy supported the Puppet
State in Kosovo and persists developing military bases and new armaments.
The people struggling for the health, against the high speed trains or
the crisis of rubbish, met the repression and the denial of their demands.
The bribery and the system of politician caste lasted and expanded at
the shade of the centre-left.
For these reasons we communists call the proletarians and the masses to
say NO to both the form of the bourgeois government, ready to join a big
anti-workers coalition.
We call to advance in the class and mass struggle in all the social and
political battles, to fight for an alternative to these governments: a
WORKERS GOVERNMENT, emerging from the struggling movement of the
exploited and oppressed masses, supported by the base and struggle
organizations of the proletarians and the masses, marching toward the
socialist alternative.
We want a workers, anti-capitalist and truly democratic and popular
government, that will satisfies the political and economic demands of
the toiling masses and will realize radical changes, expropriating the
major means of production and exchange, and putting them under the
control of the working class so to open the road to the transformation
of the whole economic and social order toward the socialism.
The formula “workers government” today serves the propaganda of the
communists’ solutions of the problem of the daily life of the
proletarians and people’s masses.
Through that we make clear that for the working class and the people’s
masses there are not parliamentary solutions of their fundamental
problems, and that only the working class can give birth to a government
that will not bow down before the altar of the profits and the bourgeois
institutions, but rather will strive to overcome the crisis defeating
the capitalism.
It helps to propagandize and give again dignity and strength to the
perspective of the proletarian power, the socialism end the communism.
proletari comunisti,
piattaforma comunista
April 2008
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Press release on anniversary of the start of the Iraq War in 2003
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 19, 2008
From: Judith Karpova
Today, the fifth anniversary of the 2003 US attack on Iraq, attorneys Michael Sussman and Stephen Bergstein filed a brief to the Supreme Court to defend me against the prosecution of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Treasury Department: Judith Karpova v. John Snow, Secretary, Department of the Treasury, United States of America.
Five years ago, in February and March of 2003, I went to Iraq with an international movement called the Human Shields to defend the UN designated civilian infrastructure of that country, such as water treatment plants and power generating stations. Such sites had been bombed by the US in the 1991 Gulf War, with catastrophic results for the Iraqi civilian population. The Human Shields had the larger ambition of bringing enough Western people into Iraq to prevent the war from going forward. Though failing in this greater goal, the sites we lived on during the 2003 war were not bombed. We were hosted by an Iraqi tourism ministry which provided food, lodgings and transportation within the country.
The Treasury Department accuses me of supporting the pre-war Iraqi economy by allegedly buying food and thus breaking the economic embargo against Iraq. As if, had I spent a few dollars, I could have undermined the entire US effort, going on for twelve years, to impoverish and starve the Iraqi people. Over a million Iraqi people died as a direct result of these sanctions, from the lack of banned medication and from untreated water. The embargo had become an international scandal.
The war which did go forward in 2003 is beyond a scandal. The Bush administration has again destroyed the country's infrastructure, used cluster bombs and depleted uranium against it citizens, handed over Iraq's reconstruction money to political cronies, and economically looted the country. It is closing in on seizing its oil reserves. In the desperate scarcity it has created, the administration uses US taxpayer money to pay every Iraqi sect and militia to kill each other. It has killed at least another million Iraqi people through these policies and driven millions more from their homes. The US soldiers trying to contain the Iraqi insurgency are treated as throwaways, denied protective equipment in the field and care when they return. While the administration borrows trillions of dollars to pay for its oil war in Iraq, it attempts to punish me and other humanitarian travelers for witnessing pre-war Iraq and stating that Iraqi lives are no less important than our own.
This Administration has a policy of impunity. The war itself was based on unconfirmed assertions and actually forged documents. Mercenary contractors commit atrocities in Iraq and are immune from prosecution because they're neither part of the military nor subject to US civilian law. Iraq itself is not permitted to prosecute any foreign contractors and these contractors fail to rebuild, but get paid anyway. Paul Bremer, the administrator of Iraq in 2003, says he's not subject to law because the Coalition Provisional Authority was not an entity of the US government. Worst of all, people are rendered, imprisoned and tortured without the possibility of defending themselves. In my case the courts mirror this culture of impunity. Without a hearing, without having to submit any evidence or proof to an impartial judge or jury, the Treasury Department has both accused and convicted me of supporting the Iraqi economy by my humanitarian travel there prior to the war. In his memorandum to the Southern District Court of New York State, the US Attorney notes that the (Federal) Second Circuit "has declined to attach talismanic significance to the availability of an oral hearing."[1] A talisman is an object thought to have magical powers. This is apparently what the government now thinks of due process -- as a kind of superstition. Thus far the state and Federal Courts have upheld this denial of due process. I have filed to the Supreme Court today to ask if the culture of impunity has engulfed them as well. Do they also find due process nothing more than a superstition, or is it instead part of our Constitution, which they need to uphold?
Judith Karpova
213 Sundown Road
Kerhonkson, NY 12445
dahlia@wildblue.net
845 626-7355
Attorneys:
Michael H. Sussman, Esq.
Sussman & Watkins
Po Box 1005
Goshen, New York 10924
sussman1@frontiernet.net
(845) 294-3991
Stephen Bergstein, Esq.
Bergstein & Ullrich
15 Railroad Avenue
Chester, New York 10918
(845) 469-1277
Lead Counsel
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] US District Court Southern District of New York, Judith Karpova against John Snow, 05 Civ. 5812 (CM) ECF Case p. 11
URL-www.uruknet.info?p=42698
Arabs divide; Israel rules
Linda S. Heard, Online Journal Contributing Writer
Apr 2, 2008, 00:57
As the Damascus Arab League Summit has illustrated, the principle of Arab unity has rarely been as fragile. For the people of this region, this is a tragedy. The more Arabs are divided on crucial issues affecting their lives, the more unprotected and powerless ordinary people feel. For in the world of geopolitics small is definitely not beautiful.
Every crack that forms within the Arab nation represents another vulnerability that offers its enemies a quicker route to fulfilling their own goals. For instance, on Sunday, an Arab League statement warned Israel that the league's continued support for the 2002 Saudi "Arab Peace Initiative" was contingent upon Israel's actions. The Israeli papers have reacted by suggesting the offer isn't workable anyway because it relies on the agreement of all 22 Arab League member countries, many of which are currently at odds with one another.
Such divisions have given the Israelis an excuse to pour public scorn on the Arab Peace Initiative, which they never intended to take seriously anyway, since they have little intention of pulling back behind pre-1967 borders or handing over East Jerusalem to become the capital of a new Palestinian state.
Put simply, the more Arabs can't get along, the more Israel is strengthened. The current animosities between Lebanese are music to the Israeli government's ears because a strong, unified and economically viable Lebanon might emerge as a potential threat on its borders.
Similarly, the ideological and political split between Palestinian factions is a bonus for Israel, which is able, in all good conscience, to proclaim it doesn't have a partner for peace. This is a chasm that was engineered by the US State Department as we now know from leaked memos and which is being promoted by Israel every time it offers concessions to the West Bank while heaping more pain on Gaza.
The ousting by the West of Israel's arch foe Saddam Hussein was cheered on by Tel Aviv, which also benefits from the inter-fighting within Iraq that precludes it from reemerging as a power any time soon, even if the occupation forces were to pack up and go.
Arab disunity was at the core of a 1982 paper, titled "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties," written by Oded Yinon, an Israeli journalist attached to his country's Foreign Ministry, and published by the Association of Arab American University Graduates. "The plan operates on two essential premises," goes the introduction written by Khalil Nakhleh. "To survive, Israel must first become an imperial regional power and secondly, must effect the division of the whole area into small states . . ." The paper itself accurately predicts the dissolution of Iraq into three autonomous regions and describes Lebanon as being "a state in which there is no centralized power but only five de facto sovereign authorities." Lebanon "is torn apart and its economy is falling to pieces," Yinon wrote more than a quarter-of-a-century ago.
"Egypt is in the worst situation," he writes. "Millions are on the verge of hunger, half the labor force is unemployed. Who would have believed that 26 years on Egypt is facing a shortage of wheat that has led to bread riots while 20 percent live below the poverty level even though unemployment has been reduced to ten percent!"
The author of the 1982 paper points out that Egypt relies on US aid, which it still does today. This state of affairs begs this question. Why does a country considered the mother of the Arab nation have to rely on handouts from a Western power when this region is one of the richest on the planet? Why aren't wealthier Arab countries ready to step in with cash to ensure Egypt's independence?
This question is especially pertinent after the recent Suez Canal incident, whereby a cargo ship under contract to the US Navy shot and killed a 27-year-old Egyptian cigarette vendor plying his trade by motorboat within his country's own waters. And instead of being detained for questioning, the ship's crew were allowed to continue their journey unimpeded. The father of two children was buried last Tuesday without anyone being held responsible. Why is it that, while the rest of the world's nation states are forging political, economic and defense links with allies, the Arab world is fragmenting?
The EU has become a bloc of 27 countries with a joint population of almost 500 million with disparate cultures, traditions and languages. Canada, the US and Mexico will join forces if the touted North American Union ever gets off the ground. South American states are unifying on the lines of the EU. The Caspian states have found common purpose. Russia is reclaiming its former status as a major world power. China and India are developing economically and militarily.
In a nutshell, this is not the time for feuding between Arab states if the Arab world expects to maintain any clout within the international arena. Such bickering not only feeds into Israel's long-term strategies, it also facilitates the regional grip of oil-hungry foreign powers.
An Arab world united toward achieving the common good of its 300 million people would be a force to be reckoned with. If European countries could put aside cultural differences and mend rifts brought about by wars, then surely Arabs with so much in common can do it, too, provided there's a will to trust and forgive.
Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.
Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
:: Article nr. 42698 sent on 03-apr-2008 09:27 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=42698
Darfur: New force faces morass of enmities in a hostile landscape
Jonathan Clayton: Analysis
Clan loyalties and tribal affiliations long ago ceased to offer protection in Darfur, Sudan’s vast western province, where village has turned upon village, neighbour against neighbour, Muslim against Muslim.
In the past seven days alone, at least 50 people have been killed in clashes between rival Arab tribes in the western part of an area that is larger than France. The violence marked the seventh time since February that a supposed truce has been violated.
The fighting, like that now taking place in most of Darfur, centred on ancient rivalries over water, grazing rights and dowries. A void created by the absence of any responsible government and an incompetent African Union peace mission has now been filled by centuries-old disputes settled with 21st-century weapons.
The Rzigat Aballa Arabs previously formed the backbone of the dreaded Janjawid militia. Khartoum unleashed them initially on the area in 2003 to quash a rebellion by the black African majority that resented rule by the Arab-dominated Government. The African tribes, also Muslims, represent about 90 per cent of the 6.5 million population.
The Rzigat Aballa have been fighting the Torjum – with whom they allied briefly – for months over tribal lands west of Nyala, one of Darfur’s main towns.
Sudanese newspapers reported that the latest fighting began on July 25 when a group of Rzigat Aballa tribesmen fell on a band of Torjum. More than 25 people were killed in the ensuing fighting, which a tribal chief said flared again a few days later when Aballa men were attacked from four directions. The fighting lasted all day and killed at least 34 people.
Fighting across the province, which has only a handful of roads, has now become so localised that it would take battalions of well-armed peacekeepers to quell. The rebels at the heart of the rebellion splintered into several factions, based on ethnicity, in 2006 and turned on one another. Some made deals with former Arab tribes and resorted to banditry. Black Africans from the Zaghawa and Fur tribes, historic rivals who united to demand more autonomy from the Arab-dominated Government in Khartoum, began fighting each other. One group even entered government after a Western-supported peace deal and then turned on its old allies.
The new United Nations/African Union force, urged by Gordon Brown, must enter this morass. It will be made up virtually entirely of African nations, possibly supported by troops from the usual developing countries that make up such missions – Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Morocco.
They will be operating in one of the world’s most remote and inaccessible areas, characterised by immense historical complexity. Half the population of Darfur, which is centred on the volcanic Jebel Marra massif, belong to the Fur tribe. The rest are divided among more than 15 different ethnic and linguistic groups, some nomadic cattle herders, some settled peasant farmers. All are Sunni Muslims. Political analysts say that only a mission with the capability to intervene forcefully and with great determination has any hope of success. Even then, they emphasise that it has to be accompanied by a renewed effort to obtain a political settlement.
The crisis in Darfur – where an estimated 200,000 people have been killed and more than a million made homeless – has spilt over into Chad, home to many of the same sedentary African and marauding Arab tribes. Last year it led to fighting in the capital.
"Peace will remain elusive unless the international community coordinates better to surmount obstacles, including the ruling party’s pursuit of military victory and increasing rebel divisions," a recent report from the think-tank International Crisis Group said.
Sudan experts give warning that the failure to end the insecurity and violence in Darfur could now threaten the 2005 peace deal that ended the separate civil war in the country between the Muslim north and Christian south. "Although all sides in Darfur are Muslim, there are other tensions which are being reflected in the south, where factionalism is also taking hold. The Darfur disease could easily spread as the same problems – such as an absence of representation, which created it – exist elsewhere," one said recently.
4.2 million
people depend on the world's largest aid operation
2.5 million
have abandoned their homes to escape violence
200,000
are believed to have died in the conflict and from disease and malnutrition. About 9,000 deaths are acknowledged by the Khartoum Government
8
aid convoys attacked in the past week
Sources: ReliefWeek; UN World food Programme; USAid
* From The Times, August 1, 2007
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article2176276.ece
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