eatbees blog

I didn’t have to choose between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton until May 6, because my state of North Carolina was one of the last to hold a primary this year. After hesitating for a long time, because of doubts as to who would do more to transform America after the Bush years—Obama has good intentions, but that isn’t enough—I finally went with Obama, based on my respect for him after seeing how he handled the controversies that have dogged his campaign in recent weeks.

I still felt bad for Hillary because of her fighting spirit, and because I had no doubt that she would make an excellent president. However, rather than dying with dignity, her campaign has been acting ever more mean-spirited and bizarre. Hillary herself has said a number of things over the last two weeks that truly scare me, forcing me to question her thinking and reconsider the respect for her that I once had.

I have in mind three quotes in particlular. The first was in response to a question about how she would respond if Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel. Rather than challenging the question as absurd, speculative, or warmongering, she said this.

I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran. … Whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program, in the next ten years during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.

Next, after proposing a summer “gas tax holiday” that economists of all political stripes have criticized as useless or counterproductive, she was asked to name a single expert who supports her plan. She responded by attacking the very idea that experts have a role in shaping policy.

I’m not going to put my lot in with economists. … We’ve been, for the last seven years, seeing a tremendous amount of government power and elite opinion basically behind policies that haven’t worked well for the middle class and hard-working Americans.

Finally, while making the argument that she could do better than Obama against John McCain in November, because Obama supposedly has failed to win the confidence of white working-class voters, she said this.

Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and…whites in both states [Indiana and North Carolina] who had not completed college were supporting me. There’s a pattern emerging here.

In other words, in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to win her party’s nomination, Hillary is painting herself as more warlike towards Iran and less interested in listening to experts than even George W. Bush. On top of that, she has indulged in racial chauvinism, joining the terms “hard-working Americans” and “white Americans” in a way that makes it sound like non-white Americans don’t like to work.

There is no doubt in my mind, I voted the right way. Barack Obama has run the nobler campaign, the campaign that will bring the biggest change from the Bush years, and on top of that, the winning campaign. I’m just waiting for Hillary to leave the stage so we can move on to the national debate we need to have before starting a new era in 2009.

The New York Times says America is finally taming its immigrants!

The May Day demonstrations were significantly smaller than in previous years, and gone were calls for a nationwide boycott of businesses and work.

In exchange:

Police beat and shoved protesters last year, but the procession was peaceful this year.

Actually, if I remember correctly, last year some protesters were shot with rubber bullets. But let’s give the Times points for trying.

Where did I get this understanding? I don’t remember. No teacher taught me it, or many did. I improvised it through contact with friends, and by testing myself in the world. Slowly, over time, certain patterns emerged, confirmed in books, and I came to realize that I understood. But who is my teacher? The world is my teacher, and my own heart.

In another time, we would have been happy to have memorized a few poems or religious sayings; and to know how to fix a broken chair, mend a hole in a garment, or help a sheep that had injured his foot. But now, life is complicated and we want a credential, some specialized knowledge that we can hang onto with certainty in all this chatter.

The male mentality is perhaps too rigid, too programmatic and lacking in imagination, to figure out how to integrate the female impulse into public life without undermining its carefully constructed order. Feminine nature is seen as chaotic, malleable, surprising, the very opposite of order; and yet such fluidity, adaptability, and imagination are desperately needed for renewal. The trick is to figure out how to integrate this chaotic impulse without undermining the foundations of order completely.

At a fundraiser in San Francisco, explaining why he sometimes has trouble getting support from white working-class voters who are going through economic hard times, Barack Obama said this:

So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Taken out of context like this (the full context is here) the quote makes it look like Obama is telling his telling his wealthy, sophisticated San Francisco audience that the people who won’t vote for him in Pennsylvania are just a bunch of ignorant haters. Hillary Clinton picked up on this later in the day, saying this:

It’s being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter; well, that’s not my experience. Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them; they need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families.

John McCain followed up with the very same thought, through his spokesman Steve Schmidt:

It shows an elitism and condescension toward hard-working Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking. It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans.

So Obama is in trouble again, right? Judge for yourself from the video below, from a rally that same evening in Terre Haute, Indiana. The hall looks to be full of exactly the kind of white working-class voters he was accused of “looking down” on or “condescending” to. His pitch to them is anything but condescending, and it ends in a standing ovation.

After this and the Jerimiah Wright affair, I’m beginning to recognize a pattern. When he is attacked in this way (taking a few words out of context) Obama doesn’t back down from what he originally said. Instead he seizes the opportunity to explain himself, underlining, reframing, and turning the controversy to his advantage.

He seems confident in himself and those he’s speaking to. I have to say it’s refreshing.

Barack Obama’s speech on race, whose honesty and nuance are all too rare in American politics, deserves to be read or watched in full. For the first time, I’m persuaded that Obama is a unique politician. He may be opportunistic like the rest, but his horizons are broader. He doesn’t accept the rules as written. He educates, broadens the debate.

We could quibble and say that Obama delivered this speech because he had to, after being forced into a corner by controversy over the words of his pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. But what matters to me is that he seized the moment, transforming a corrosive political dispute into a teaching opportunity about what divides us in America.

Far from sugar-coating our differences as politicians tend to do, he proclaimed that black anger and white anger are both real, and have a legitimate source. Both blacks and whites have seen their dreams evaporate over the past generation. Powerful interests stir that anger, dividing us against each other, when in fact our problems are much the same. America is turning into a nation where the privileges of a few take priority over the common good. Rather than being divided by race, we should unite to overcome this crisis which is hurting everyone.

This is a fairly radical idea in American politics, and I’m not suprised that most commentators have passed over it in silence. Here is the core of Obama’s argument. Judge for yourself.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family… all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us. … For all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it—those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. …. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. …

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. … As far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away…. Like the anger within the black community, these resentments… have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. …

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze—a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. … This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. …

We have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. … If we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change. …

Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools…. This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care…. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

Here’s the tone-deaf response by Nixon speechwriter, anti-immigrant crusader, and right-wing dinosaur Patrick Buchanan. It’s such a perfect example of white paternalism that it parodies itself. I remember hearing this sort of talk growing up, but I thought it was gone.

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships… reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. …

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s… to bring the African-American community into the mainstream. …

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

What’s ironic is that Buchanan’s constituency of working-class whites, many of them second- or third-generation immigrants, are the very people Obama is trying to enlist in a common cause. Whether Obama becomes president, and America takes a step away from its legacy of division, depends in large part on whether disillusioned whites are able to hear Obama’s words, or whether they respond only to Buchanan’s us-versus-them rhetoric of the past.

As Confucius said:

The young should be dutiful at home, modest abroad, heedful and true, full of goodwill for the many, close friends with love; and should they have strength to spare, let them spend it upon the arts.

Our friend Doga gives us his latest report from the ground in Morocco.

For thirty years or more, with each new Moroccan government the same problems are discussed, with a bit of variation in style. Poverty, health care, unemployment—these have been the daily concerns of Moroccans for a long time. The fact that the same conversation keeps repeating itself without noticable results has brought frustration to the hearts of Moroccans, especially young people. The boycott of the legislative elections of 2007 is one sign of these frustrations.

Instead of falling into this trap ourselves by repeating the same old complaints, we should evolve our vision through new readings of the situation, and also change our form of protest. In my opinion, before criticizing the government and its officials, we need to take an objective look at the terrain on which the political game is played. The negative attributes of society such as corruption, abuse of power, and theft of public funds aren’t due to the bad behavior of individuals, so much as to a bad system of government. This is why these negative attributes, rather than being the cause, are the effect of a system of government that hasn’t changed since Morocco gained its independence. This is the vicious circle in which we are endlessly trapped.

It’s easy to see how the centralization of power, coupled with individual choices, gives us either obedient politicians ready to blindly applaud the Makhzen, or politicians excluded from power. Those who accept the political game as defined by the Makhzen lose their legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens, because when they make promises at election time which they know will be impossible to implement due to the Constitution and the way the political game is played, they are lying to Moroccans. If they were sincere, they would insist on constitutional reforms that adhere to global democratic norms, but instead we have a mediocre political game that thumbs its nose at Moroccans and their future. We have political parties that reassure us that the poverty crisis is easing so long as they are in government, but as soon as they are out of power for even a few months, their analysis reverses itself, and poverty is getting worse again!

It’s also easy to see how the economic monopoly of the rich, and the non-distribution of wealth, block the socio-economic development of society by obliging people to depend on intermediaries to advance their interests and those of their families. Those intermediaries are often the type of politician already mentioned, which is why we can observe small groupings in society that share reciprocal interests outside the public interest, while the majority of the population remains marginalized.

Let’s suppose that I’m a nihilist as the Makhzen wants to call me, even though I’m just a simple citizen who is expressing himself spontaneously. Does this mean that the international agencies are nihilistic as well, whose reports rank Morocco in a shameful position in all areas of development? We are badly in need of self-criticism and acknowledgement that the system itself is corrupt. If the authorities attack an article that says something about the Makhzen, for example, claiming that its author has taken improper advantage of the freedom of expression he was given, this shows that the Makhzen isn’t protecting people’s natural and international rights, but rather treating them as handouts like it does in politics and the economy! So it isn’t surprising to see institutions like education and public health go from one crisis to the next, when the people who are responsible for the crisis in the first place are later put in charge of proposing solutions.

Along with all this, there is a parallel policy of manufacturing consent, in which the majority of intellectuals and the press participate to one degree or another. The intellectuals are genuinely isolated from the concerns of the people. We only hear from them when it’s a question of criticizing the Islamists, who tend to be opponents of the Makhzen. The majority of the press isn’t much better. They improve upon the intellectuals by reporting on demonstrations held by unions or activist groups, or by expressing solidarity with unemployed college graduates assaulted by the Makhzen. It isn’t hard to find criticism in our press of the workings of government and its institutions. We can read this type of crtitcism here and there, because people need to hear it and experience a bit of solidarity, even though nothing fundamental will change. It lets the crowd breathe a little. Still, these criticisms don’t go to the root of the matter, nor do they bother to fill in the gaps in our understanding or provide a positive critique.

What they do is repeat the discourse of the Makhzen. Even in the best case, I would say that the majority of the press closely follows the official line. With headlines like “Morocco in Motion,” “Morocco in Development,” “Democratic Transition,” “National Initiative for Human Development” and “The Just State,” we might be excused for believing that Morocco will soon surpass Sweden. But these are just expressions for manipulating popular sentiment. Saying “Democratic Transition” without mentioning the need for constitutional reforms, or saying “The Just State” without mentioning the need for an independent judiciary, does nothing but give the empty impression that things are better now than they once were.

As a followup to doga’s post about the “dirty game” of “corrupt, interest-based politics” being played in Gaza, and the way we are all being sucked into it “voluntarily or involunarily,” here is a roundup of Gaza news that has appeared over the last few days.

First, everyone is talking about “The Gaza Bombshell,” the article by David Rose in Vanity Fair. A lot of what it reveals has been known for some time, in “bits and fragments” as Missing Links puts it, “but not the whole story.” For example, in May 2007, Tony Karon wrote an article called “Palestinian Pinochet Making His Move?” which makes the same case with the advantage of foresight, rather than hindsight.

Both articles allege that following the Hamas electoral victory in 2006, the Bush administration stoked the flames of civil war in Gaza by feeding money and arms to Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan to use against Hamas, with the intention of putting a government in place that would do Washington’s bidding. The coup failed because Hamas counterattacked before Dahlan was ready. They won the battle, leaving them in control of Gaza and setting up the situation we are in now.

Rose’s article provides valuable background, such as interviews with insiders including Dahlan, and documentatary evidence that has emerged after the fact. Its importance isn’t so much that it breaks new ground, as that it ties the loose ends together. One interesting angle is that Elliott Abrams, who bloodied his hands in the 1980s as one of the key Washington players in the Contra insurgency in Nicaragua, reprised his role 20 years later in Gaza. This is one reason Vanity Fair refers to the Gaza debacle as “Iran-Contra 2.0.”

The article begins in late 2006 with the torture of Hamas militants by Dahlan’s henchmen. In yet another sign of the way that viral media are revolutionizing the way we experience a story, the event was captured on video and can be watched here.

“They told us they were going to kill us. They made us sit on the ground,” [says Abu Dan]. He rolls up the legs of his trousers to display the circular scars that are evidence of what happened next: “They shot our knees and feet—five bullets each. I spent four months in a wheelchair.” Abu Dan had no way of knowing it, but his tormentors had a secret ally: the administration of President George W. Bush. …

There is no one more hated among Hamas members than Muhammad Dahlan, long Fatah’s resident strongman in Gaza. Dahlan…has spent more than a decade battling Hamas. Dahlan insists that Abu Dan was tortured without his knowledge, but the video is proof that his followers’ methods can be brutal. Bush has met Dahlan on at least three occasions. … In private, say multiple Israeli and American officials, the U.S. president described him as “our guy.” …

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents…which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. … But the secret plan backfired…. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza. …

“Everyone here recognizes that Dahlan was trying with American help to undermine the results of the elections,” says Mahmoud Zahar, the former foreign minister for the Haniyeh government…. “He was the one planning a coup.” …

Years of oppression by Dahlan and his forces were avenged as Hamas chased down stray Fatah fighters and subjected them to summary execution. At least one victim was reportedly thrown from the roof of a high-rise building. By June 16, Hamas had captured every Fatah building, as well as Abbas’s official Gaza residence. Much of Dahlan’s house, which doubled as his office, was reduced to rubble.

This is a story of duplicity and overreaching, just what we’ve come to expect from the Bush administration. In an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, author David Rose mentions another way that this story fits the pattern of the Bush years. Critical information was kept from Congress which they needed to do their jobs.

Amy Goodman: Isn’t it openly known that the U.S. is arming and supporting Fatah?

David Rose: Well, no, it’s not, because, for example, General Keith Dayton, the United States security coordinator who has been in the region now for three or four years…told the Congress on May 23, 2007—that’s just over two weeks before the Hamas coup—that the US was only supplying non-lethal aid to Fatah. He was emphatic about this…. And in fact, just a week before the coup began, the news broke in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Dayton himself had asked for Israeli clearance to allow an import of armored cars, heavy weapons, machine guns and so forth into Gaza from Egypt…. I don’t think, by any stretch of the imagination, machine guns, ammunition and armored cars can be described as non-lethal aid. …

Amy Goodman: Are you saying the Bush administration misled Congress, when it comes to—

David Rose: I’m absolutely saying that. They lied to Congress.

Besides Elliott Abrams’ involvement, one of the reasons it makes sense to call this “Iran-Contra 2.0″ is because, like the earlier scandal, it involved going behind the backs of Congress to get money and weapons to paramilitary forces the U.S. was supporting. In this case, rather than the money coming from arms sales to Iran, private donations from right wingers, and sale of cocaine in American cities, it was solicited from the governments of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Egypt was directly involved in training Dahlan’s men. Yet another reason, perhaps, for the people of the Middle East to get their act together and put governments in power that support the interests of their people, rather than doing the bidding of Washington.

Next, the British newspaper The Guardian presents a report about the effects of Israeli sanctions imposed on Gaza since Hamas gained power there. According to a coalition of British aid groups, even before Israel’s latest invasion, the people of Gaza were suffering “their worst humanitarian crisis since the 1967 war.”

Movement is all but impossible and supplies of food and water, sewage treatment and basic healthcare can no longer be taken for granted. The economy has collapsed, unemployment is expected to rise to 50%, hospitals are suffering 12-hour power cuts and schools are failing—all creating a “humanitarian implosion”….

The situation in Gaza is “man-made, completely avoidable, and with the necessary political will can be reversed,” say the groups, which include Oxfam, Amnesty and Save the Children.

Yet the worst is yet to come for the people of Gaza, according to a story translated from Arabic by Missing Links, because the Israelis intend to prevent future rocket attacks by forcing tens of thousands of people living in northern Gaza to flee their homes. Apparently this plan will be implemented soon.

Channel Two of Israeli Television disclosed yesterday, Wednesday, that the Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has gotten the green light from the Security and Political Council of Ministers…to plan for the removal of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the northern Gaza Strip, namely from the region that the resistance uses for the launch of [Qassam] rockets, and to move them toward Gaza City and to confine them there. … The reporter said that once the plan becomes operational, it would start immediately: In the first stage there would be a drop of leaflets advising residents to leave their homes…and in the event residents didn’t obey the warnings, the occupation army would begin bombing the inhabited areas in order to compel them to leave their homes and go to Gaza City.

Finally, in their usual display of slavish devotion to Israel, the U.S. Congress voted 404-1 on Wednesday to label the Israeli slaughter of civilians “inadvertent” and blame it on the Palestinians themselves. The resolution was originally written back in January, but new language was added just before the vote to justify Israel’s recent actions.

Those responsible for launching rocket attacks against Israel routinely embed their production facilities and launch sites amongst the Palestinian civilian population, utilizing them as human shields. … The inadvertent inflicting of civilian casualties as a result of defensive military operations…while deeply regrettable, is not at all morally equivalent to the deliberate targeting of civilian populations as practiced by Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorist groups.

Of the 435 members of Congress, the overwhelming majority of both Republicans and Democrats endorsed these views. The only “No” vote came from maverick presidential candidate Ron Paul.

Amid all this cynicism and despair, there is one small piece of optimistic news. A worldwide coalition of Muslim intellectuals has issued a “Call to Peace, Dialogue and Understanding” that seems to be receiving a positive response from the Jewish community. Tariq Ramadan, whom I wrote about here, is one of the signatories of this document.

It is our contention that we are faced today not with “a clash of civilizations” but with “a clash of ill-informed misunderstandings.” Deep-seated stereotypes and prejudices have resulted in a distancing of the communities and even a dehumanizing of the “Other.” We urgently need to address this situation. …

Although many Muslims and non-Muslims only know of Muslim-Jewish relations through the prism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there needs to be an awareness of other positive encounters at different stages of our history….

Prejudice and bigotry towards each other have been perpetuated by our lack of knowledge about the other, and yet the pursuit of knowledge is at the core of both our religious traditions. …

At this moment, there is no challenge more pressing than the need to bring to a closure some of the historical and long lasting estrangements between the Jews and Muslims. …

At the core of the Muslim-Jewish tension lies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. … Most Muslims would hope that the sufferings Jews have experienced over many centuries would make them more sensitive to the sufferings of others, especially the Palestinian people.