Master Plan or Screw Up? Georgia U.S. Government Strategy

This is the best article yet about U.S. and Russian competition over Georgia. If you harbored any doubts that this is one small battle in the great energy wars which have already begun, read on. And, if you have any expectations that U.S. policy win this region would shift in an Obama administration, you should also read on. Key sections highlighted.


Master Plan or Screw Up? Georgia and U.S. Strategy

By MIKE WHITNEY, Counterpunch, August 14, 2008

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney08142008.html

The American-armed and trained Georgian army swarmed into South Ossetia last Thursday, killing an estimated 2,000 civilians, sending 40,000 South Ossetians fleeing over the Russian border, and destroying much of the capital, Tskhinvali. The attack was unprovoked and took place a full 24 hours before even ONE Russian soldier set foot in South Ossetia. Nevertheless, the vast majority of Americans still believe that the Russian army invaded Georgian territory first. The BBC, AP, NPR, the New York Times and the rest of the establishment media have consistently and deliberately misled their readers into believing that the violence in South Ossetia was initiated by the Kremlin. Let's be clear, it wasn't. In truth, there is NO dispute about the facts except among the people who rely the western press for their information. Despite its steady loss of credibility, the corporate media continues to operate as the propaganda-arm of the Pentagon.

Former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev gave a good summary of events in an op-ed in Monday's Washington Post:

For some time, relative calm was maintained in South Ossetia. The peacekeeping force composed of Russians, Georgians and Ossetians fulfilled its mission, and ordinary Ossetians and Georgians, who live close to each other, found at least some common ground....What happened on the night of Aug. 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas....Mounting a military assault against innocents was a reckless decision whose tragic consequences, for thousands of people of different nationalities, are now clear. The Georgian leadership could do this only with the perceived support and encouragement of a much more powerful force. Georgian armed forces were trained by hundreds of U.S. instructors, and its sophisticated military equipment was bought in a number of countries. This, coupled with the promise of NATO membership, emboldened Georgian leaders into thinking that they could get away with a "blitzkrieg" in South Ossetia...Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against "small, defenseless Georgia" is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity."

Russia deployed its tanks and troops to South Ossetia to save the lives of civilians and to reestablish the peace. Period. It has no interest in annexing the former-Soviet country or in expanding its present borders. Now that the Georgian army has been routed, Russian president Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin have expressed a willingness to settle the dispute through normal diplomatic channels at the United Nations. Neither leader is under any illusions about Washington's involvement in the hostilities. They know that Georgian President Mikail Saakashvili is an American stooge who came to power in a CIA-backed coup, the so-called "Rose Revolution", and would never order a major military operation without explicit instructions from his White House puppetmasters.

The Georgian army had no chance of winning a war with Russia or any intention of occupying the territory they captured. The real aim was to lure the Russian army into a trap. US planners hope to do what they did so skillfully in Afghanistan; lure their Russian prey into a long and bloody Chechnya-type fiasco that will pit their Russia troops against guerrilla forces armed and trained by US military and intelligence agencies. The war will be waged in the name of liberating Georgia from Russian imperialism and stopping Putin from achieving his alleged ambition to control critical western-owned pipelines around the Caspian Basin.

In June, former foreign policy adviser to President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, presented the basic storyline that would be used against Russia two full months before the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia. The article appeared on the Kavkazcenter web site. Brzezinski said the United States witnessed "cases of possible threats by Russia, directed at Georgia with the intention of taking control over the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline".

Brzezinski: "Russia actively tends to isolate the Central Asian region from direct access to world economy, especially to energy supplies..If Georgia government is destabilized, western access to Baku, Caspian Sea and further will be limited".

Brzezinski's speculation is part of a broader scenario that's been crafted for the western media to provide a rationale for upcoming aggression against Russia. Brzezinski is not only the architect of the mujahadin-led campaign against Russia in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but also, the author of "The Grand Chessboard--American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives", the operating theory behind “the war on terror” which involves massive US intervention in Central Asia to control vital resources, fragment Russia, and surround manufacturing giant, China.

"The Grand Chessboard" is the 21st century's version of the Great Game. The book begins with this revealing statement:

"Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some five hundred years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power.....The key to controlling Eurasia is controlling the Central Asian Republics."

This is the heart-and-soul of the war on terror. The real braintrust behind "never-ending conflict" was actually focussed on Central Asia. It was the pro-Israeli crowd in the Republican Party that pulled the old switcheroo and refocussed on the Middle East rather than Eurasia. Now, powerful members of the US foreign policy establishment (Brzezinski, Albright, Holbrooke) have regrouped behind the populist "cardboard" presidential candidate Barack Obama and are preparing to redirect America's war efforts to the Asian theater. Obama offers voters a choice of wars not a choice against war.

On Sunday, Brzezinski accused Russia of imperial ambitions comparing Putin to "Stalin and Hitler" in an interview with Nathan Gardels.

Gardels: What is the world to make of Russia's invasion of Georgia?

Zbigniew Brzezinski: Fundamentally at stake is what kind of role Russia will play in the new international system.(aka: New World Order) Unfortunately, Putin is putting Russia on a course that is ominously similar to Stalin's and Hitler's in the late 1930s. Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt has correctly drawn an analogy between Putin's "justification" for dismembering Georgia -- because of the Russians in South Ossetia -- to Hitler's tactics vis a vis Czechoslovakia to "free" the Sudeten Deutsch. Even more ominous is the analogy of what Putin is doing vis-a-vis Georgia to what Stalin did vis-a-vis Finland: subverting by use of force the sovereignty of a small democratic neighbor. In effect, morally and strategically, Georgia is the Finland of our day.

The question the international community now confronts is how to respond to a Russia that engages in the blatant use of force with larger imperial designs in mind: to reintegrate the former Soviet space under the Kremlin's control and to cut Western access to the Caspian Sea and Central Asia by gaining control over the Baku/Ceyhan pipeline that runs through Georgia.

In brief, the stakes are very significant. At stake is access to oil as that resource grows ever more scarce and expensive and how a major power conducts itself in our newly interdependent world, conduct that should be based on accommodation and consensus, not on brute force.

If Georgia is subverted, not only will the West be cut off from the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. We can logically anticipate that Putin, if not resisted, will use the same tactics toward the Ukraine. Putin has already made public threats against Ukraine."

Brzezinski, Holbrooke and Albright form the "Imperialist A-Team"; these are not the bungling "Keystone Cops" neocons like Feith and Rumsfeld who trip over themselves getting out of bed in the morning. They know what they are doing and they are good at it. They're not fools. They have aligned themselves with the Obama camp and are preparing for the next big outbreak of global trouble-making. This should serve as a sobering wake-up call for voters who still think Obama represents "Change We Can Believe In".

Richard Holbrooke appeared on Tuesday's Jim Lerher News Hour with resident neocon Margaret Warner. Typical of Warner's "even-handed" approach, both of the interviewees were ultra-conservatives from right-wing think tanks: Richard Holbrooke, from the Council on Foreign Relations and Dmiti Simes from the Nixon Center.

According to Holbrooke, "The Russians deliberately provoked (the fighting in South Ossetia) and timed it for the Olympics. This is a long-standing Russian effort to get rid of President Saakashvili."

Right. Is that why Putin was so shocked when he heard the news (while he was in Beijing) that he quickly boarded a plane and headed for Moscow? (after shaking his finger angrily at Bush!)

Holbrooke: "And I want to stress, I'm not a warmonger, and I don't want a new Cold War any more than Dimitri does....The Russians wish to re-establish a historic area of hegemony that includes Ukraine. And it is no accident that the other former Soviet republics are watching this and extraordinarily upset, as Putin progresses with an attempt to re-create a kind of a hegemonic space."

It is impossible to go over all of Holbrooke's distortions, half-truths and lies but, what is important is to recognize that a story is being constructed to demonize Putin and to justify future hostilities against Russia. Holbrooke's bogus assertions are identical to Brzezinski's, and yet, these same lies are already appearing in the mainstream media. The propaganda "bullet points" have already been determined; "Putin is a menace","Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet empire", "Putin is an autocrat". (Unlike our "freedom loving" allies in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt!?!) In truth, Putin is simply enjoying Russia's newly acquired energy-wealth and would like to be left alone.

So why are Brzezinski and his backers in the foreign policy establishment demonizing Putin and threatening Russia with "ostracism, isolation and economic penalties?" What is Putin's crime?

Putin's problems can be traced back to a speech he made in Munich nearly two years ago when he declared unequivocally that he rejected the basic tenets of the Bush Doctrine and US global hegemony. His speech amounted to a Russian Declaration of Independence. That's when western elites, particularly at the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Enterprise Institute put Putin on their "enemies list" along with Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Castro, Morales, Mugabe and anyone else who refuses to take orders from the Washington Mafia.

Here's what Putin said in Munich:

The unipolar world refers to a world in which there is one master, one sovereign---- one center of authority, one center of force, one center of decision-making. At the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.… What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilization.

Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centers of tension. Judge for yourselves---wars as well as local and regional conflicts have not diminished. More are dying than before. Significantly more, significantly more!

Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper-use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts.

We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?

In international relations we increasingly see the desire to resolve a given question according to so-called issues of political expediency, based on the current political climate. And of course this is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this – no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course such a policy stimulates an arms race.

I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security.

Every word Putin spoke was true which is why it was not reprinted in the western media.

“Unilateral and illegitimate military actions”, the “uncontained hyper-use of force”, the “disdain for the basic principles of international law”, and most importantly; “No one feels safe!”

Putin's claims are all indisputable, that is why he has entered the neocons crosshairs. He poses a direct challenge to what Brzezinski calls the "international system", which is shorthand for the corporate/banking cartel that is controlled by the western oligarchy of racketeers.

Was the Georgian attack last Thursday a set-up, organized in Washington? Unfortunately for Bush, the wily Russian prime minister is considerably brighter than anyone in the current administration. Bush's plan will undoubtedly backfire and disrupt the geopolitical balance of power. The world might get that breather from the US after all.

Israel's Role in the Russia-Georgia War

The Electronic Intifada has a superb article on the Israel-Georgia connection. The next four years will see many more small and large wars in the Middle East, such as South Ossetia, because of the critical importance of the region's oil, gas, and pipelines. Israel's role will be murky, but luckily websites like Electronic Intifada, can be expected to ferret out the details.

Tel Aviv to Tbilisi: Israel's role in the Russia-Georgia war
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 12 August 2008

Israelis wave both Georgian and Israeli flags as they chant anti-Russian slogans during a demonstration outside the Russian embassy in Tel Aviv, 11 August. (Gali Tibbon/AFP/Getty Images)

From the moment Georgia launched a surprise attack on the tiny breakaway region of South Ossetia last week, prompting a fierce Russian counterattack, Israel has been trying to distance itself from the conflict. This is understandable: with Georgian forces on the retreat, large numbers of civilians killed and injured, and Russia's fury unabated, Israel's deep involvement is severely embarrassing.

The collapse of the Georgian offensive represents not only a disaster for that country and its US-backed leaders, but another blow to the myth of Israel's military prestige and prowess. Worse, Israel fears that Russia could retaliate by stepping up its military assistance to Israel's adversaries including Iran.

"Israel is following with great concern the developments in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and hopes the violence will end," its foreign ministry said, adding with uncharacteristic doveishness, "Israel recognizes the territorial integrity of Georgia and calls for a peaceful solution."

Tbilisi's top diplomat in Tel Aviv complained about the lackluster Israeli response to his country's predicament and perhaps overestimating Israeli influence, called for Israeli "diplomatic pressure on Moscow." Just like Israel, the diplomat said, Georgia is fighting a war on "terrorism." Israeli officials politely told the Georgians that "the address for that type of pressure was Washington" (Herb Keinon, "Tbilisi wants Israel to pressure Russia," The Jerusalem Post, 11 August 2008).

While Israel was keen to downplay its role, Georgia perhaps hoped that flattery might draw Israel further in. Georgian minister Temur Yakobashvili -- whom the Israeli daily Haaretz stressed was Jewish -- told Israeli army radio that "Israel should be proud of its military which trained Georgian soldiers." Yakobashvili claimed rather implausibly, according to Haaretz, that "a small group of Georgian soldiers were able to wipe out an entire Russian military division, thanks to the Israeli training" ("Georgian minister tells Israel Radio: Thanks to Israeli training, we're fending off Russian military," Haaretz, 11 August 2008).

Since 2000, Israel has sold hundreds of millions of dollars in arms and combat training to Georgia. Weapons included guns, ammunition, shells, tactical missile systems, antiaircraft systems, automatic turrets for armored vehicles, electronic equipment and remotely piloted aircraft. These sales were authorized by the Israeli defense ministry (Arie Egozi, "War in Georgia: The Israeli connection," Ynet, 10 August 2008).

Training also involved officers from Israel's Shin Bet secret service -- which has for decades carried out extrajudicial executions and torture of Palestinians in the occupied territories -- the Israeli police, and the country's major arms companies Elbit and Rafael.

The Tel Aviv-Tbilisi military axis appears to have been cemented at the highest levels, and according to YNet, "The fact that Georgia's defense minister, Davit Kezerashvili, is a former Israeli who is fluent in Hebrew contributed to this cooperation." Others involved in the brisk arms trade included former Israeli minister and Tel Aviv mayor Roni Milo as well as several senior Israeli military officers.

The key liaison was Reserve Brigadier General Gal Hirsch who commanded Israeli forces on the border with Lebanon during the July 2006 Second Lebanon War. (Yossi Melman, "Georgia Violence - A frozen alliance," Haaretz, 10 August 2008). He resigned from the army after the Winograd commission severely criticized Israel's conduct of its war against Lebanon and an internal Israeli army investigation blamed Hirsch for the seizure of two soldiers by Hizballah.

According to one of the Israeli combat trainers, an officer in an "elite" Israel army unit, Hirsch and colleagues would sometimes personally supervise the training of Georgian forces which included "house-to-house fighting." The training was carried out through several "private" companies with close links to the Israeli military.

As the violence raged in Georgia, the trainer was desperately trying to contact his former Georgian students on the battlefront via mobile phone: the Israelis wanted to know whether the Georgians had "internalized Israeli military technique and if the special reconnaissance forces have chalked up any successes" (Jonathan Lis and Moti Katz, "IDF vets who trained Georgia troops say war with Russia is no surprise," Haaretz, 11 August 2008).

Yet on the ground, the Israeli-trained Georgian forces, perhaps unsurprisingly overwhelmed by the Russians, have done little to redeem the image of Israel's military following its defeat by Hizballah in July-August 2006.

The question remains as to why Israel was involved in the first place. There are several reasons. The first is simply economic opportunism: for years, especially since the 11 September 2001 attacks, arms exports and "security expertise" have been one of Israel's growth industries. But the close Israeli involvement in a region Russia considers to be of vital interest suggests that Israel might have been acting as part of the broader US scheme to encircle Russia and contain its reemerging power.

Since the end of the Cold War, the US has been steadily encroaching on Russia's borders and expanding NATO in a manner the Kremlin considers highly provocative. Shortly after coming into office, the Bush Administration tore up the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and, like the Clinton administration, adopted former Soviet satellite states as its own, using them to base an anti-missile system Russia views as a threat. In addition to their "global war on terror," hawks in Washington have recently been talking up a new Cold War with Russia.

Georgia was an eager volunteer in this effort and has learned quickly the correct rhetoric: one Georgian minister claimed that "every bomb that falls on our heads is an attack on democracy, on the European Union and on America." Georgia has been trying to join NATO, and sent 2,000 soldiers to help the US occupy Iraq. It may have hoped that once war started this loyalty would be rewarded with the kind of round-the-clock airlift of weapons that Israel receives from the US during its wars. Instead so far the US only helped airlift the Georgian troops from Iraq back to the beleaguered home front.

By helping Georgia, Israel may have been doing its part to duplicate its own experience in assisting the eastward expansion of the "Euro-Atlantic" empire. While supporting Georgia was certainly risky for Israel, given the possible Russian reaction, it has a compelling reason to intervene in a region that is heavily contested by global powers. Israel must constantly reinvent itself as an "asset" to American power if it is to maintain the US support that ensures its survival as a settler-colonial enclave in the Middle East. It is a familiar role; in the 1970s and 1980s, at the behest of Washington, Israel helped South Africa's apartheid regime fight Soviet-supported insurgencies in South African-occupied Namibia and Angola, and it trained right-wing US-allied death squads fighting left-wing governments and movements in Central America. After 2001, Israel marketed itself as an expert on combating "Islamic terrorism."

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez recently denounced Colombia - long one of the largest recipients of US military aid after Israel -- as the "Israel of Latin America." Georgia's government, to the detriment of its people, may have tried to play the role of the "Israel of the Caucasus" -- a loyal servant of US ambitions in that region -- and lost the gamble. Playing with empires is dangerous for a small country.

As for Israel itself, with the Bush Doctrine having failed to give birth to the "new Middle East" that the US needs to maintain its power in the region against growing resistance, an ever more desperate and rogue Israel must look for opportunities to prove its worth elsewhere. That is a dangerous and scary thing.

Rolling Stone on "Candidate for Sale."

Following up on previous discussions, if one subscibes to the lesser-evil approach to elections, how can you be sure? While many liberals and left liberals impose their hopes on Obama's promises, Matt Taibbi argues in the August 21, 2008, Rolling Stone that the enormous, overlapping campaign funding which the two leading candidates are receiving from corporate American, espcially Wall Street, ensure the continuation of what is politely called business-friendly public policies. Others call it wealthfare or socialism for the rich and capitalism for the rest of us.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/22210615/candidates_for_sale

MATT TAIBBI, Rollingstone.com, August 21, 2008

Candidates for Sale

What do Obama and McCain have in common? The same big donors, who will expect to have their way no matter who wins.

Remember the total, hideous, inexcusable absence of oversight that has been the great hallmark of George Bush's America for almost eight years now? Well, now we're getting to see that same regulatory malfeasance applied to yet another cornerstone of our political system. The Federal Election Commission — the body that supposedly enforces campaign-finance laws in this country — has been out of business for more than six months. That's because Congress was dragging its feet over confirmation hearings for new FEC commissioners, leaving the agency without a quorum. The commission just started work again for the first time on July 10th under its new chairman, Donald McGahn, a classic Republican Party yahoo whose chief qualifications include representing Tom DeLay, the corrupt ex-speaker of the House, in matters of campaign finance.

Apart from the obvious absurdity of not having a functioning election-policing mechanism in an election year in the world's richest democracy, the late start by the FEC makes it almost impossible for the agency to do its job. The commission has a long-standing reluctance to take action in the last months before a vote, a policy designed to help prevent federal regulators from influencing election outcomes. Normally, the FEC tries to root out infractions and loopholes — fining campaigns for incomplete reporting, or for taking shortcuts around spending limits — in the early months of a campaign season. But that ship sailed way too long ago to take the stink off the 2008 race.

"The time for setting the ground rules was earlier," says Craig Holman, a lobbyist with the watchdog group Public Citizen. "There isn't time to do much now."

That's especially true given the magnitude of what we're dealing with here: the biggest pile of political contributions in the history of free elections, nearly a billion dollars given to presidential candidates in this season alone. Because the FEC has been dead in the water for so long, it's likely that we'll still be in the dark about a large chunk of this record manure pile of campaign contributions when we go to vote in November.

But that doesn't mean that a little sifting through campaign records doesn't tell us quite a lot about who's backing whom in these races. The truth is that the campaigns of both Barack Obama and John McCain are being inundated with cash from more or less exactly the same gorgons of the corporate scene. From Wall Street to the Big Oil powerhouses to the military-industrial complex, America's fat-cat business leaders know that the Animal House-style party of the last eight years that made almost all of them rich with bonuses, government contracts and bubble profits is about to come to an end, and someone is going to have to pay to clean up the mess. They want that someone to be you, not them, and they've spared no expense to make sure both presidential candidates will be there to bail them out next year.

They're succeeding. Both would-be presidents have already sold us out. They've taken the money and run — completing the cyclical transformation of the American political narrative from one of monopolistic Republican iniquity to an even more depressing tale about the overweening power of corporate money and the essentially fictitious nature of our two-party system.

In layman's terms, we've gone from being screwed to being fucked. Who knows — maybe Barack Obama will surprise us if he wins the election. But if you look at the money, it doesn't look good.

Thanks in part to the dormant FEC, corporate America has had even easier access to the candidates than usual in its effort to buy off the next government before the crash. In fact, this election has seen some excellent new innovations in the area of campaign-fundraising atrocities. Chief among them is the rise of so-called "joint committees."

It used to be that campaigns could raise a maximum of $2,300 from each individual. Now, both candidates — but especially McCain, who far outstrips Obama in this area — routinely hold fundraisers in which individuals can give far more to a joint committee. Technically, the candidate still pockets only $2,300 in contributions. The bulk of the money raised — in McCain's case, a whopping $70,100, or 30 times the previous limit — goes to the state and national arms of the candidate's party, which can then spend the unprecedented haul on behalf of the candidate. "This allows CEOs to walk in the door and drop $70,100," says Holman. "It basically allows campaigns to exceed the spending limits."

McCain has raised more than $63 million via these joint committees, thanks to more than 1,000 "megadonors" who have each given at least $25,000 to his campaign effort. Obama, by contrast, has some 471 megadonors — and a close examination of their backgrounds underscores some of the differences in corporate America's attitudes toward the two candidates.

One of McCain's chief sources of corporate money is the private-equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, memorialized for its takeover of RJR Nabisco in the movie Barbarians at the Gate. Through the pretext of joint committees, 10 KKR executives have given McCain $285,000, and it's not hard to figure out why. Two of McCain's key campaign proposals — lowering the corporate tax rate to 25 percent and making purchases of industrial equipment fully deductible — would save a single KKR subsidiary, Energy Future Holdings, $49 million.

"Just in his tax policies alone, McCain is saving corporate America $175 billion a year," says James Kvaal, who analyzed McCain's tax policy for the nonprofit Center for American Progress.

McCain has also raked in big contributions from two other giants of the buyout world: the Carlyle Group (famous for its close ties to the Bush administration) and the Blackstone Group (whose co-founder, Pete Peterson, wrote a $28,500 check to McCain after he took home almost $1.8 billion from a public offering last year). McCain has also received monstrous sums from hedge-fund managers, attracted by his pledge to keep the tax rate on their earnings at only 15 percent. Executives and family members in a single hedge fund, Knott Partners, have contributed some $225,700 to McCain's campaign.

Then there's the predictable influx of cash from would-be military contractors. John Lehman, a former secretary of the Navy whose firm builds the Superferry transport vessel, not only donated $28,500 of his own money, but bundled at least $250,000 for McCain from other donors. Donald Bollinger, who is a contractor on the controversial Littoral Combat Ship, gave $27,300 and bundled a whopping $500,000. Anyone want to bet on a decrease in Naval appropriations in a McCain presidency?

McCain has also received big money from telecommunications magnates. The senator has always been a friend to the industry: Back in 2003, just four days after AT&T sent him a check for $10,500, he sponsored a bill to ban state and local taxes on Internet service. Since 2007, McCain has taken in some $1.3 million from the communications industry. Just four members of the McCaw family, which owns the telecommunications firm Eagle River, have kicked in $123,200. McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, was a former lobbyist for BellSouth, Verizon and SBC Communications. His deputy campaign manager, Christian Ferry, was a partner to Davis at Verizon. One of his chief advisers, Charlie Black, is the head of the lobbying firm BKSH and Associates, which represents AT&T. His Senate chief of staff, Mark Buse, worked for AT&T Wireless. All told, of 66 current and former lobbyists working for McCain, some 23 come from the telecommunications industry.

Given McCain's telecom backing, it's not surprising that the senator has had one of his characteristic changes of heart. As recently as last November, McCain was staunchly opposed to retroactive immunity for telecommunication companies that took part in Bush's illegal spying on American consumers, saying their actions "undermine our respect for the law." Now, jammed to the gills with telecom cash, McCain calls himself an "unqualified" supporter of immunity, praising the telecom industry's warrantless wiretapping as "constitutional and appropriate."

All the same, plenty of other evidence suggests that much of Wall Street is betting on an Obama win. In fact, some observers believe that KKR announced a multibillion-dollar public offering this summer because it expects McCain to lose. "They're doing the public offering now so that the compensation can be taxed at the lower rate while Bush is still in office," says a strategist for a major labor union. "They're betting Obama is going to win, and they're getting their money while they can."

Other companies are getting in on the ground floor with the new chief by stuffing money in his ears. Overall, Obama is flat-out kicking McCain's ass when it comes to Wall Street contributions, raking in nearly $9 million from securities and investment executives, compared to $6.2 million for McCain. Obama has received more contributions from Goldman Sachs than from any other employer — more than $627,000 at this writing — not to mention $398,021 from JP Morgan Chase, $353,922 from Lehman Brothers and $291,388 from Morgan Stanley. Even among hedge-fund executives, who have an unequivocal interest in electing McCain, Obama is whipping the Republican, collecting $500,000 more than McCain. All of which begs the question: Why would corporate giants like these throw so much weight behind a man who promises to strip them of billions in tax breaks?

Sadly, the answer to that question increasingly appears to be that Obama is, well, full of shit. He has made no bones about his plans to raise income by soaking the rich, promising to roll back the Bush tax cuts for people making over $250,000, increase the top tax rate on capital gains to 25 percent and raise the top rate on qualified dividends. He has also pledged to deliver a real stomach punch to hedge-fund managers, raising the tax rate on most of their income from 15 percent to 35 percent.

These populist pledges sound good, but many business moguls appear to be betting that the tax policies, like Obama himself, are only that: something that sounds good. "I think we don't want to make too much of his promises on taxes," says Robert Pollin, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts. "Not all of these things will happen." Noting the overwhelming amount of Wall Street money pouring into Obama's campaign, even elitist fuckwad David Brooks was recently moved to write, "Once the Republicans are vanquished, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for that capital-gains tax hike."

Those worried that Obama might be all talk when it comes to needed reform had a real scare in July, when the senator failed to show up to vote for the Stop Excessive Speculation Act, a bill designed to curb rampant oil speculation. Oil speculators provide the perfect microcosm of what happened to the economy under Bush. Back in 2001, investment banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan got together and created an online exchange called the ICE for trading energy commodities. The ICE ended up buying the British-regulated International Petroleum Exchange; it then opened trading windows in the U.S., allowing Wall Street investment banks to make oil-futures trades on American soil, on their very own commodities exchange, without any federal regulation whatsoever.

"In financial terms, they were playing blackjack at tables where they themselves were the dealers, in casinos they themselves owned," says Warren Gunnels, a senior policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders. "It was crazy." Trading on the ICE had a massive impact on U.S. gasoline prices, and more than one legislator wondered if energy speculators were manipulating the market, as energy traders like Enron had been before. The speculation bill was designed to regulate the ICE and place limits on trades. But on the day before Obama returned from his eight-day, eight-country, megadazzling international photo op, Democrats failed by a vote of 50-43 to force a vote on the bill, as heavy lobbying by investment banks like Goldman Sachs torpedoed the effort.

Not only did Obama not show up to vote, he appeared at a public forum three days later flanked by Jon Corzine and Robert Rubin, two former Goldman executives, to discuss how to revive the economy. Here you have the basic formula of campaign contributions in a nutshell: Powerful investment bank gives big money to candidate, needed reform requires candidate to cross said investment bank, candidate pussies out and finds way to be gone at the moment of truth, candidate resurfaces later in arms of aforementioned investment bankers.

Obama's absence on oil speculation was eerily reminiscent of his previous decision to change his mind about giving retroactive immunity to telecom companies for spying on Americans. Obama withdrew his pledge to filibuster the immunity bill right around the time the Democrats announced that AT&T would be sponsoring the Democratic convention. So no filibuster on retroactive immunity from the top Democrat — but conventiongoers in Denver will get tote bags emblazoned with the AT&T logo. So that's something.

Look, we all knew this was coming. Once Obama vanquished Hillary Clinton, it was inevitable that his campaign would start roping in the Clinton moneymen for the fall confrontation with McCain. Among those snagged by Obama were Iranian millionaire and former Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman Hassan Nemazee, venture capitalist Alan Patricof and the touchingly plugged-in Wall Street power couple Maureen White (First Boston) and Steven Rattner (Morgan Stanley). Rattner and White, the former chief fundraiser for the DNC, are longtime friends of the Clintons; she quit the DNC in 2006 to build Hillary's war chest, while he backed Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont and flirted with a Mike Bloomberg presidential run. Such are the people who are now whispering in Obama's ear.

Over the summer, the Obama camp has relentlessly pushed the notion that its record fundraising is mainly the result of small online donations. The first presidential candidate to raise so much money that he could afford to eschew the spending limits that would be imposed if he accepted federal matching funds, Obama claims that he opted out of public funding so that he could have a campaign "truly funded by the American people." And indeed, he has a record number of small donors, with some 45 percent of his campaign cash coming from contributions smaller than $200.

Which is a great percentage — but it's only eight points better than John Kerry in 2004 and only 14 points better than George Bush that same year. In truth, Obama is still raising tons of money from big corporate donors. In June alone, as Obama was raking in more than $30 million from small donors, he also bagged $6 million in a single fundraiser at Ethel Kennedy's home in Virginia and another $5 million at an event in Hollywood. But time and time again, you see Obama aides boasting about how the day of the big-dollar donor is over. "More people are involved, and I think that necessarily dilutes the impact of any individual — which is probably a good thing," one prominent Obama supporter recently declared. This staunch champion of the small donor happened to be none other than James Rubin, son of former Goldman Sachs co-chairman Bob Rubin.

Obama's decision to embrace Clinton's moneymen coincided with his decision to attend a public forum on economic policy with an A list of Clinton-era economic advisors, including Rubin and Corzine. "The message is that he's going to be a friend to Wall Street, just as Bill Clinton was a friend to Wall Street," says Pollin. "Wall Street will want to be at the head of the table."

By now it should be clear what type of service Wall Street will demand. The financial disaster dumped on us by eight years of Bush's mismanagement has left America with the prospect of short-term solutions in the form of massive government bailouts, and long-term solutions in the form of reform and regulation. A big chunk of the $1 billion in cash that will be spent on the presidential race this year represents Wall Street's desire to make sure that both candidates can be counted on to make the short-term bailouts large and passionate, and the reforms gentle and halfhearted. "They want to make sure there's socialism when they need it — bailouts — and capitalism when they need that," says Pollin.

Both candidates are already falling all over themselves to signal their business-friendly approach to the economy. McCain entered this election with a reputation as a strict Goldwater conservative. "I have always been committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly," he declared. McCain also sounded off in the past about troubled quasi-governmental lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, pledging to "make them go away" and to strip them of their right to lobby.

But this year, McCain — perhaps emboldened by the $238,100 he got from seven JP Morgan Chase executives or the $500,000 bundled for him by Chase executive James Lee Jr. — caved in and supported Chase's outrageous government-backed acquisition of Bear Stearns. He also backed the recent bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — no surprise given that former Fannie Mae lobbyists are serving as his chief of staff and the head of his vice presidential vetting panel.

Obama also supported the Freddie Mac-Fannie Mae rescue, and that, too, is no surprise, given that he hired one former chairman of Fannie Mae to chair his vice presidential vetting panel and hired another former Fannie Mae chairman to serve as his consultant on housing issues. Most of us will never get within a hundred miles of a single Fannie Mae chairman, but Obama has already hired two — and he isn't even president yet.

This, folks, is the way of the world. Forget all the promises to make the rich pay their fair share. As the candidates get closer to office, the actual paying customers move to the front of the line.

Sadly, both candidates have an extensive history of being dependable pals of campaign contributors. Back in 2000, when Obama was a state senator in Illinois, an entrepreneur named Robert Blackwell Jr. hired him to be his lawyer, paying him a monthly retainer of $8,000 — big money for a part-time legislator with an annual salary of just $58,000. A few months later, Obama sent a letter urging state tourism officials to give a grant to one of Blackwell's companies, the amusingly named Killerspin, to fund a table-tennis tournament. Killerspin received $320,000 in public funds; Obama pocketed $112,000 in fees from Blackwell.

So far this year, Blackwell has bundled more than $100,000 for Obama's campaign. Looks like there's going to be a shitload of table-tennis tournaments all across America next year.

McCain also likes to write letters for big contributors. In 1998, four months after BellSouth contributed $16,750 to the senator, he sent a letter to the FCC asking it to give "serious consideration" to the company's request to enter the long-distance market. He later wrote letters on behalf of Paxson Communications, which donated $20,000 and let him use their company jet, as well as Ameritech and SBC Communications, which raised $120,000 for McCain at a time when they were seeking permission to merge.

McCain's still sticking by that gang. Former Ameritech chairman Richard Notebaert bundled more than $100,000 for him this year, and two of McCain's key fundraisers, Peter Madigan and Tim McKone, hail from SBC. The point is that politicians are intensely loyal to the people who give them money — and not anywhere near as loyal to the promises they've made to suckers like us. No matter who's in the White House, the direction of the government has remained remarkably stable. Clinton's treasury secretary, Rubin, was a Goldman Sachs man; Henry Paulson, the current secretary under Bush, is also a Goldman Sachs man. It'll probably be a Goldman man again next year. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. In sickness or in health, the faces may change, but the money remains. "It's not an accident that both administrations picked for leading economic advisers people from Goldman Sachs," says Pollin.

The really distressing thing about all of this is the signal it sends to Americans. Goldman Sachs posted a record profit of $11 billion last year, much of it from betting against the subprime mortgage market they themselves helped to fuck up. That little energy exchange Goldman set up, the ICE, made a profit of $240 million last year, as gas prices skyrocketed. It may suck to be you right now, but all that pain isn't so bad if you are a big oil speculator.

When you live in million-dollar Manhattan townhouses and make billions in profits betting on the pain of the ordinary foreclosed homeowner, you shouldn't get to run around on TV with the prospective president on your arm. You should be hung by your balls. But that's not the way it works, and despite what you might have heard about "change," it probably never will be.

For all the excitement that Barack Obama has garnered, and all the talk about a new day in Washington, it would be tragic if the real legacy of his election victory was to finally expose the essentially unchanging, oligarchic nature of our political system. It's the same old story: Money talks, and bullshit walks. And don't be surprised if we're the ones still walking after November.

[From Issue 1059 — August 21, 2008]

Obama and the Empire by Bill Blum

One of the better pieces to date on the like foreign policy of the presidential front runner, Barack Obama, once his administration assumes power. For those who find Blum's analysis discouraging, please remember that elections only take several days per year, which leave about 363 days for "extra-parliamentary" politics!

Obama And The Empire

By William Blum, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20438.htm

05/08/08 "ICH" -- - The New Yorker magazine in its July 14 issue ran a cover cartoon that achieved instant fame. It showed Barack Obama wearing Muslim garb in the Oval Office with a portrait of Osama bin Laden on the wall. Obama is delivering a fist bump to his wife, Michelle, who has an Afro hairdo and an assault rifle slung over her shoulder. An American flag lies burning in the fireplace. The magazine says it's all satire, a parody of the crazy right-wing fears, rumors, and scare tactics about Obama's past and ideology.

The cartoon makes fun of the idea that Barack and Michelle Obama are some kind of mixture of Black Panther, Islamist jihadist, and Marxist revolutionary. But how much more educational for the American public and the world it would be to make fun of the idea that Obama is even some kind of progressive.

I'm more concerned here with foreign policy than domestic issues because it's in this area that the US government can do, and indeed does do, the most harm to the world, to put it mildly. And in this area what do we find? We find Obama threatening, several times, to attack Iran if they don't do what the United States wants them to do nuclear-wise; threatening more than once to attack Pakistan if their anti-terrorist policies are not tough enough or if there would be a regime change in the nuclear-armed country not to his liking; calling for a large increase in US troops and tougher policies for Afghanistan; wholly and unequivocally embracing Israel as if it were the 51st state; totally ignoring Hamas, an elected ruling party in the occupied territory; decrying the Berlin Wall in his recent talk in that city, about the safest thing a politician can do, but with no mention of the Israeli Wall while in Israel, nor the numerous American-built walls in Baghdad while in Iraq; referring to the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez as "authoritarian", but never referring similarly to the government of George W. Bush, certainly more deserving of the label; talking with the usual disinformation and hostility about Cuba, albeit with a token reform re visits and remittances. But would he dare mention the outrageous case of the imprisoned Cuban Five[1] in his frequent references to fighting terrorism?

While an Illinois state senator in January 2004, Obama declared that it was time "to end the embargo with Cuba" because it had "utterly failed in the effort to overthrow Castro." But speaking as a presidential candidate to a Cuban-American audience in Miami in August 2007, he said he would not "take off the embargo" as president because it is "an important inducement for change."[2] He thus went from a good policy for the wrong reason to the wrong policy for the wrong reason. Does Mr. Obama care any more than Mr. Bush that the United Nations General Assembly has voted -- virtually unanimously -- 16 years in a row against the embargo?

In summary, it would be difficult to name a single ODE (Officially Designated Enemy) that Obama has not been critical of, or to name one that he has supported. Can this be mere coincidence?

The fact that Obama says he's willing to "talk" to some of the "enemies" more than the Bush administration has done sounds good, but one doesn't have to be too cynical to believe that it will not amount to more than a public relations gimmick. It's only change of policy that counts. Why doesn't he simply and clearly state that he would not attack Iran unless Iran first attacked the US or Israel or anyone else?

As to Iraq, if you're sick to the core of your being about the horrors US policy brings down upon the heads of the people of that unhappy land, then you must support withdrawal –- immediate, total, all troops, combat and non-combat, all the Blackwater-type killer contractors, not moved to Kuwait or Qatar to be on call. All bases out. No permanent bases. No permanent war. No timetables. No approval by the US military necessary. No reductions in forces. Just OUT. ALL. Just like what the people of Iraq want. Nothing less will give them the opportunity to try to put an end to the civil war and violence instigated by the American invasion and occupation and to recreate their failed state.

George W. Bush, 2006: "We're going to stay in Iraq to get the job done as long as the government wants us there."[3]
George W. Bush, 2007: "It's their government's choice. If they were to say, leave, we would leave."[4]
Iraqi National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, 2008: "said his government was 'impatiently waiting' for the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops."[5]
Barack Obama, 2008: We can "redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months."[6]

Obama's terms of withdrawal equals no withdrawal. Literally. Has he ever said that the war is categorically illegal and immoral? A war crime? Or that anti-American terrorism in the world is the direct result of oppressive US policies? Instead he calls for a troop increase and "the first truly 21st century military ... We must maintain the strongest, best-equipped military in the world."[7] Why of course, that's what the people of the United States and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and the rest of the people in this sad world desperately desire and need -- greater American killing power! Obama is not so much concerned with ending America's endless warfare as he is with "succeeding" in them, by whatever perverted definition of that word.

And has he ever dared to raise the obvious question: Why would Iran, even if nuclear armed, be a threat to attack the US or Israel? Any more than Iraq was such a threat. Which was zero. Instead, he has said things like "Iran continues to be a major threat" and repeats the tiresome lie that the Iranian president called for the destruction of Israel.[8]

Obama, one observer has noted, "opposes the present US policy in Iraq not on the basis of any principled opposition to neo-colonialism or aggressive war, but rather on the grounds that the Iraq war is a mistaken deployment of power that fails to advance the global strategic interests of American imperialism."[9]

He and his supporters have made much of the speech he delivered in the Illinois state legislature in 2002 against the upcoming US invasion of Iraq. But two years later, when he was running for the US Senate, he declared: "There's not that much difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage."[10] Since taking office in January 2005, he has voted to approve every war appropriation the Republicans have put forward. He also voted to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State despite her complicity in the Bush Administration's false justifications for going to war in Iraq. In doing so, he lacked the courage of 12 of his Democratic Party Senate colleagues who voted against her confirmation.

If you're one of those who would like to believe that Obama has to present moderate foreign policy views to be elected, but once he's in the White House we can forget that he lied to us repeatedly and the true, progressive man of peace and international law and human rights will emerge ... keep in mind that as a US Senate candidate in 2004 he threatened missile strikes against Iran[11], and winning that election apparently did not put him in touch with his inner peacenik.

When, in 2005, the other Illinois Senator, Dick Durbin, stuck his neck out and compared American torture at Guantanamo to "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings", and was angrily denounced by the right wing, Obama stood up in the Senate and ... defended him? No, he joined the critics, thrice calling Durbin's remark a "mistake".[12]

One of Obama's chief foreign policy advisers is Zbigniew Brzezinski, a man instrumental in provoking Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, which was followed by massive US military supplies to the opposition and widespread war. This gave rise to a generation of Islamic jihadists, the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and more than two decades of anti-American terrorism. Asked later if he had any regrets about this policy, Brzezinski replied: "Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, in substance: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war."[13]

Another prominent Obama adviser -- from a list entirely and depressingly establishment-imperial -- is Madeleine Albright, who should always wear gloves because her hands are caked with blood from her roles in the bombings of Iraq and Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

In a primary campaign talk in March, Obama said that "he would return the country to the more 'traditional' foreign policy efforts of past presidents, such as George H.W. Bush, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan."[14] Use your imagination. Bloody serial interventionists, all.

Why have well-known conservatives like George Will, David Brooks, Rush Limbaugh, Joe Scarborough, and others spoken so favorably about Obama's candidacy?[15] Whatever else, they know he's not a threat to their most cherished views and values.

Given all this, can we expect a more enlightened, less bloody, more progressive and humane foreign policy from Mr. Barack Obama? Forget the alleged eloquence and charm; forget the warm feel-good stuff; forget the interminable clichés and platitudes about hope, change, unity, and America's indispensable role as world leader; forget all the religiobabble; forget John McCain and George W. Bush ... All that counts is putting an end to the horror -- the bombings, the invasions, the killings, the destruction, the overthrows, the occupations, the torture, the American Empire.

Al Gore and John Kerry both took the progressive vote for granted. Neither had ever been particularly progressive themself. Each harbored a measure of disdain for the left. Both paid a heavy price for the neglect. I and millions like me voted for Ralph Nader, or some other third-party candidate, or stayed home. Obama is doing the same as Gore and Kerry. Progressives should let him know that his positions are not acceptable, keeping up the anti-war pressure on him and the Democratic Party at every opportunity. For whatever good it just might do.

I'm afraid that if Barack Obama becomes president he's going to break a lot of young hearts. And some older ones as well.

Writer Norman Solomon has written: "These days, an appreciable number of Obama supporters are starting to use words like "disillusionment." But that's a consequence of projecting their political outlooks onto the candidate in the first place. The best way to avoid becoming disillusioned is to not have illusions in the first place."

NOTES

[1] William Blum, "Cuban Political Prisoners ... in the United States" -- http://members.aol.com/bblum6/polpris.htm

[2] Washington Post, February 25, 2008; p.A4

[3] New York Times. December 1, 2006, p.1

[4] White House press conference, May 24, 2007

[5] Washington Post, July 9, 2008

[6] Obama's website: www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/

[7] Speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, April 23, 2007

[8] Haaretz.com (leading Israeli newspaper), May 16, 2007

[9] Bill Van Auken, Global Research, July 18, 2008 -- http://www.globalresearch.ca/

[10] Chicago Tribune, July 27, 2004

[11] Chicago Tribune, September 25, 2004

[12] Congressional Record, June 21, 2005, p.S6897

[13] For the full Brzezinski interview see http://members.aol.com/bblum6/brz.htm

[14] Associated Press, March 28, 2008

[15] See, for example, Peter Wehner, "Why Republicans Like Obama", Washington Post, February 3, 2008, p.B7

illiam Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir, Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire, Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Monthly Review article on futility of nationalist solutions to Israeli-Palestinina morass

This article was just published on the Monthly Review's website. It lays out a case for moving beyond the nation state, as well a Jewish/Israeli and Palestinian nationalism, as path out of the current morass of Israel/Palestine. The author argues that there is no solution to this situation within capitalism and that nationalism and nation states are part of the problem, not a solution or antithesis to it. In other words, Palestinian nationalism and proposals for a Palestinian state are not an effective response to a combination of imperialism, class oppression, and apartheid.

What is lacking in the essay, however, is the role of imperialism, especially, but not only that of the U.S. With repressive regimes, including Israel, propped up by outside powers throughout the Middle East, the prospects for a socialist post-nation state comprising Palestinians and Israelis is not particularly rosy.

Reclaiming the Commons in Palestine/Israel: Ya Basta!/Khalas!

From the Monthly Review’s website.

by Bill Templer, URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org/templer230708.html

The regime that will succeed the nation-state will not be the fruit of preconception or social engineering, but of sociological and political imagination wielded through transformative actions. -- Gustavo Esteva

Que se vayan todos ('Let's get rid of them all'). -- message written on the walls of Argentina

The No-state Solution

Even as the neo-liberal turn takes fierce hold on the Palestinian economy, the unending impasse in Palestine/Israel points up an ever more apparent fact: the nation-state is unworkable in its conventional capitalist sense. Palestine exemplifies the dead end of thinking that the state is any kind of a 'solution.' My reflections on the impasse in Palestine/Israel are in the spirit of Andrej Grubacic:

what is needed, not just in the Balkans, is an alternative to nationalism, colonialism and capitalism. [. . .] It should be a politics of a Balkan federation. A participatory society, built from the bottom up, through struggles for the creation of an inclusive democratic awareness, participatory social experiments, and an emancipatory practice that would win the political imagination of all people in the region.

Rage and Outrage in Ni'lin

Now, in the midst of the stench of the tear gas in Ni'lin, the hail of bullets against the peaceful, as hundreds resist the building of the Wall and the murderous Ihtilal (Occupation cum Suffocation), we have to understand the enemy is not just the Israeli state and the plutocracy and power it represents. Not just the Zionist state. It is this nation-state itself: we need to move beyond its violence and blindness, hype and illusions. Jamal Juma' (2008) of the key initiative Palestinian Grassroots Anti Apartheid Wall Campaign writes: "Nil'in will soon be ghettoized and isolated from the rest of the West Bank, with its main entrance being a tunnel running under the segregated settler-only road. Not only will this involve the confiscation of a further 200 dunams, but it will also effectively give the Occupation military full control over movement in and out of the area."


Neve Gordon reminds us that what is happening in Ni'lin is singular resistance, "popular acts of civil disobedience that persist despite the ruthless repression of an occupying power." And that this is 'ta'ayush,' radical solidarity: "scores of Jewish Israeli and international activists are standing beside the Palestinians residents as they try to stop military bulldozers from destroying Ni'lin's land." But what he does not say is that this is part of what should become a mass movement of resistance for another kind of society, the groundswell for radical transformation of the whole society and economy on both sides of this divide.

Thoughts on such transformation are not non-existent. Joel Kovel's (2007) vision looks to a socialist alchemy of change, one centered on a single post-capitalist state, 'Palesrael.' The Haifa Conference on the Right of Return and the Secular Democratic State in Palestine in June 2008, organized by Abnaa elBalad and other groups, highlighted the urgency of new thought on the single state solution, although a socialist vision for moving forward was perhaps not clearly enough projected. Eitan Bronstein and Norma Musih also contemplate such a vista of radical change, imagining what a state might be after massive refugee return:

We propose thinking about a form other than the familiar nation-state -- one that will not have to define itself in defensive terms against an external enemy but will instead be defined by the communities of which it is composed.

They do not say socialist commonwealth, though they may dream it. What else can work? As in Chiapas, a Zapatista-like bottom-up movement to capture the imagination and energy and activism of ordinary Israelis and Palestinians has to be built. At the June conference in Tel Aviv on implementing the massive return of Palestinian refugees, Uri Gordon was one of the few panelists to stress the need for a socialist (and social-anarchist) transformation at the grassroots to create a viable foundation for any kind of a single state of Palestinians and Jews and the building of a movement to catalyze that. Uri warned about the dangers of continuing a capitalist neo-liberal structure for any such polity. This seems only obvious. Yet a recent interview with Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky, for instance, makes no reference to socialist transformation as part of a solution in Palestine. We have to undo this silence.

Thinking outside the Capitalist and Statist Box

A sustained dialogue about options within and beyond a one-state solution is needed. But beyond all talk, it requires energizing a movement that dares to project beyond principled opposition to the viciousness and brutality of the Occupation and its outrages 24/7. Building that movement. The morass in Palestine/Israel is almost an icon of the need for such thinking. And any solution that builds toward a new architecture of a cooperative commonwealth, based on decentralized structures at all key scales from neighborhood on up (cf. Getting Free), will necessarily look likewise to transforming the greater transnational neighborhood, Mashriq and Maghreb. As Moshe Machover has often stressed, the encompassing vision has to be socialist liberation across the whole region, a dynamic federative socialist structure beyond the turf of Palestine.

How can the Palestinians who are now in forced Diaspora return in massive numbers? New ideas are advanced by Bronstein and Musih, and there was a lot of concrete talk at the recent Tel Aviv conference on the Refugee Right of Return. But how can there be any return to anything other than a space transformed by a new sense of mutual aid? How can Jewish Israelis can be awakened from decades of moral and just plain physical blindness? Inside the Israeli Leviathan, New Profile has been tackling that job of changing hearts, minds, and mindsets for over a decade, laying a foundation for a paradigm shift in thinking and feeling. But it won't come without a radical socialist movement.

ADRID, the Association for the Rights of the Internally Displaced, is organizing and agitating for a just society for all citizens of the Israeli state, and challenging Israeli apartheid. It is associated with Ittijah, an umbrella of Arab initiatives for change inside the Israeli Leviathan. But a movement is needed that dares to say socialism. That dares to say: capitalism khalas, enough. Violence khalas. Otherwise talk about a 'single democratic state' is grand naiveté. We need to get a ball of discourse rolling in a slightly different direction. NO to Occupation. NO to capitalism. NO to Zionism in any form. And NO to a politics centered solely on resistance. YES to people's dignity on both sides of this divide. YES to equity and solidarity. YES to a massive return of all refugees, the key catalyst for changing the nature of the Zionist state (Kovel, 2007).

Commenting on Zapatismo in Mexico, Gustavo Esteva, however, stresses the tentativeness of what vision should be, rooted in what ordinary people are doing and thinking:

It seems to us to be as insane as it is ridiculous to propose that some ideological or doctrinaire vision of that 'at large' should be a prerequisite for us to get moving, that every political initiative must define beforehand its final goal or the abstract future condition of the world. Those who live with their feet on the ground don't hang themselves with abstract 'at larges' or final finalities.

Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth

The goal of a libertarian-socialist multicultural and multi-faith Commonwealth could begin to energize new forms of decentralized direct democracy, people's participation and horizontalism, neighborhood autonomy as it moves beyond received notions of a capitalist 'state' run by a corporate ruling class -- in Israel a veiled dictatorship of 15 families over the Israeli economy, media, and politics.

Of, course, it's easy to say we need a mass movement striving to create a mosaic society of ta'ayush, Arab-Jewish synergy, founded on autonomy, authentic direct democracy, mutual aid. But beginnings can be forged, at the most grassroots, place-based local scales. In people's own neighborhoods, workplaces. Central here is creating a dynamism of a

"prefigurative politics" that involves constructing concrete alternatives, especially in terms of social relations. Prefigurative politics thus combines reference to both dual power strategies and to realising a libertarian and egalitarian ethos in the movement's own structures, social dynamics and lifestyle (Gordon, 2008).

Democratic Autonomous Neighborhoods

One window looks to the kind of neighborhood Household and Home Assemblies that James Herod envisions in Getting Free: Creating an Association of Democratic Autonomous Neighborhoods (2007). That could begin to generate a whole geometry of people's initiatives from the bottom up, a network of dual power, the incubators of a new society of ta'ayush and power to the people -- not just slogans, but concrete scaffolding for transformation. Adel Samara argues that the secular democratic state conceived without concomitant radical social and economic transformation "will serve the Zionist and Arab Comprador solution." I agree. But change is a process, not an event. And has to be bottom-up. Could the turmoil in Ni'lin also generate the seeds for that neighborhood organizing? Only they can do it.

Paradigms from other corners can be examined and learned from. The ongoing re-establishment of the SDS in North America is a kindred potential paradigm for ideas for participatory social activism, with a strong left-libertarian socialist thrust. What the Power to the People campaign in the U.S. has been doing over the past half year is in part building that kind of movement, now newly linked with Hip Hop social activism. And it has put two black women -- Cynthia McKinney and Latina Rican Hip Hop activist Sister Rosa Clemente -- on the Green Party ticket to stand in the electoral arena, challenging the corporate plutocracy and its parties:

we are supporting our commitment to the building of an uncompromising, unswerving, people's movement [. . .] We are refusing to collaborate with this Empire's system of oppression. Rather, we are working to dismantle it and build a fundamentally and systemically different system that addresses human needs, not human greed.

The GPUS has a clear statement on the need for exploring equitable alternatives to a 'two-state' solution and is the only major formation on the U.S. left to issue such a declaration.

Zapatismo and Beyond

Look to the Global South. Social pragmatist paradigms for such organizing initiatives are now multiplying in Latin America, within Zapatismo in Chiapas, the Landless Workers' Movement (MST) in Brazil, the rise of the indigenous peoples in Bolivia, Ecuador, and elsewhere, and as a complex of autonomous movements across Argentina, a "socialism of the people, participatory and decentralized" (Sitrin, 2006). What can be applied to spur movement building on the ground in Palestine and inside the Israeli Leviathan? As Holloway sees it, the imperative everywhere is horizontalidad:

Probably we have to think of advancing through experiments and questions: "preguntando caminamos" -- "walking we ask questions" -- as the Zapatistas put it. To think of moving forward through questions rather than answers means a different sort of politics, a different sort of organization. If nobody has the answers, then we have to think not of hierarchical structures of leadership, but horizontal structures that involve everyone as much as possible. What do we want? I think we want self-determination -- the possibility of creating our own lives, the assumption of our own humanity. [. . .] The drive to collective self-determination should be the guiding principle, the utopian star that lights up our questions and our experiments. That means, of course, an anti-state politics.

Those horizontal structures are already forming in spaces of resistance like Ni'lin. In Palestine under the boot, and the Israeli soldiers' state, that would require a massive popular movement to "reclaim the commons" among ordinary Jews and Arabs, energizing a new ensemble of struggles for direct and inclusive democracy and participatory economy, including dynamic inclusion of large numbers of returning refugees. It means bringing people in the neighborhoods into a new kind of political and economic decision-making in their own streets and communities, a pro-active role in the management of their own affairs, their work places. The progressive dismantling of all forms of Zionist ideology and domination -- within workable proposals for new forms of political life, based on local control, autonomy and creative resistance. Buoyed by a utopian realism, with practical, workable paradigms that can be learned from in the Peoples' Global Action and World Social Forum, catalyzing an alchemy of social transformation bottom-up in Israel/Falastin, centered on human dignity and autonomy. Don Gregorio, a Yaqui Indian in Mexico, put it well: "Autonomy is not something we ought to ask for or that anyone can give us. It is something we have, despite everything. Its other name is dignity."

It entails a transformation in the reality of the Arab Palestinians who are now Israeli citizens, third-class. Wakim Wakim, of ADRID, projects that clearly:

we need a revolution of thinking within the 1948 borders, to ensure the rights of all of us based on legal arrangements, mutual citizenship, a constitution, a separation of religion and state, a new legal system to adapt to the new reality, et cetera. An entirely new definition of a collective identity is all of our responsibility.

It takes a little more to 'up the anti' and start talking about a socialist revolution in thinking and grassroots organizing. There is no alternative to this. Kovel (2007) is guarded: "perhaps it will never come, given the awesome wealth and power at the command of the empire, and its craven press, cowed public, and corrupted political consciousness. Or perhaps it will. . . ."

One Big Union

Grassroots working-class syndicalism among Palestinians and Israelis, forging new bonds of solidarity, is one pathway out of the morass of the 'national question' -- and the immense ever widening gap between poor and rich in Israeli-Jewish society. It can become a hands-on incubator for overcoming mutual distrust.

As the Palestinian economy is transformed to "formalize a truncated network of Palestinian-controlled cantons and associated industrial zones, dependent upon the Israeli occupation, and through which a pool of cheap Palestinian labour is exploited by Israeli, Palestinian and other regional capitalist groups," an imperative is grassroots radical labor organizing. One option that can appeal to workers and the many unemployed is to create IWW-like base groups in both communities. Not a small political party, but a horizontally structured independent movement -- oriented to people's everyday problems to make ends meet and have a say, and broader issues of self-determination and vernacular dignity. Building, from the bottom up, a scaffolding for organizing and change, aspiring to "a world in which production and distribution are organized by workers ourselves to meet the needs of the entire population, not merely a handful of exploiters." A Wobbly union is one such non-hierarchical vessel for nurturing autonomy and workers' collective action. It is potentially robust, concrete, a structure that workers and working families can understand. Gregory W. Esteven is right on in his perception:

I've long thought that the Industrial Workers of the World's objective of organizing skilled and unskilled labor together, across national boundaries, was ahead of its time. Far from being relics of a bygone era, the work they are doing now is cutting edge. They have a better understanding of the present conjuncture than many mainstream unions, which have been slow to adapt to the realities of the postindustrial economy.

Now is the time, across Palestine, from the river to the sea, and out into the region. Here is a small paradigm.

Piqueteros against the System

Or imagine a movement like that of Argentina's piqueteros across Israel and Palestine: protesters, many unemployed and underemployed workers, large numbers of landless Bedouin from 'unrecognized' settlements in the Negev (al-Naqab) and Galilee (al-Jalil), staging marches again and again against the government to draw attention to the people's plight, mounting the barricades against the plutocracy that rules them. And massive non-violent struggle across the entire topography of the Occupation. Taking the resistance in Bil'in and Ni'lin as paradigms. As Chomsky recently stressed: "a non-violent struggle would have had considerable prospects for success. I think it still is the only prospect for success."

Authentic organization springs from struggle, not vice versa -- sustained struggle, and not just in resistance to the Occupation. Samara asks: "For those who are busy marketing the S[ingle] D[emocratic] S[tate] today: [. . .] What is their practical program? On what basis are they going to mobilize the masses?" It makes little practicable sense to argue a single democratic state unless a new conception of polity and socialist economy is its guiding vision of transformation. Only within such a framework can they move toward 'advocacy' -- spelling out "a realistic path from here to there" -- not simply 'proposal' (a distinction stressed by Chomsky).

Nodes for Anti-authoritarian Spaces

Nodes for an anti-authoritarian groundswell are imperative. Some are already budding. The social-anarchist space now opened on the Israeli left by the libertarian affinity group One Struggle (Ma'avak Ehad) needs to be broadened and extended into Palestinian society. The need is for popularizing its anti-authoritarian values into a grassroots movement to prioritize equity, diversity, solidarity, and self-management within and across the communities in this internecine struggle.

Anarchists Against the Wall is another paradigmatic space. In its fierce commitment to direct action, AATW could serve as a mini-paradigm of joint Palestinian-Israeli action, its praxis perhaps a template for future more systematic radical organizing of workers (and students as workers-to-be), One Big Union 'from the river to the sea.' AATW is involved in both direct action and demonstrations against the Wall, including in the villages of al-Ma'asara, south of Bethlehem, Beit Ummar, north of Hebron, Bil'in, and recently, almost daily, facing the brutal repression by the IDF in Ni'lin in the West Bank and elsewhere. Some sense of the terrible repression of peaceful demonstrators is visible here: <www.awalls.org/topics/niilin>. Here is a recent petition against human rights abuses there: <www.petitiononline.com/nilin/petition.html>. Add your signatures.

AATW is committed to a joint struggle of Palestinians and Israelis. Its contribution, an unprecedented mode of joint Arab-Jewish sumud (steadfastness), is widely recognized in both the Palestinian and Israeli media and is regularly reported on A-Infos. They recently issued a call for support of the legal defense of hundreds of arrested activists. Donate if you can: <www.awalls.org/donations>.

Profil Hadash is another such node. Its charter stresses:

We, a group of feminist women and men, are convinced that we need not live in a soldiers' state. [. . .] We understand that the state of war in Israel is maintained by decisions made by our politicians -- not by external forces to which we are passively subject. [. . .] We will not go on enabling them by obediently, uncritically supplying soldiers to the military which implements them.

Its work in struggling against militarism as an ideology and everyday mindset in a soldiers' state is exemplary.

Of core importance is the initiative Zochrot, foregrounding for Israeli-Jewish consciousness the Nakba and the multiple evil and injustice it has wrought.

Among Arab Palestinians, ARDIB, the groups inside Ittijah and other activist initiatives, such as the huge resistance mounted by the Ni'ilin Popular Committee against the Apartheid Wall, and the movement Abnaa elBalad are all such nodes of resistance and transformation. But sustaining them needs, we would argue, a socialist vision. And active discussion, people's think-tanks. As Yael Lerer (Balad Party) said at the June 2008 Tev Aviv conference on implementing refugee return: "We should have think-tanks inside every kibbutz. Start planning within our own communities, with other communities. This is exactly the activity that needs to start happening, with or without the approval of the government." I would add: think-tanks in every neighborhood inside the Israeli state, from Metulla to Eilat.

A Hundred Flowers Can Bloom


A hundred schools of thought can contend in this pluralistic mix of ideas for transformation. We're at an incredible juncture in the capitalist world system, maybe a socio-seismic shift. The chances for fundamental social and economic transformation in this planetary crisis are multiplying. Esteven senses that: "What comes next we cannot be sure, but it seems that the time to revive the socialist project has arrived, and it must be one adapted to the needs of the 21st century." Building a profound sense of social empathy and solidarity with ordinary people in their oppression is part of what we are about. That is what Zochrot is addressing, hands-on: "Only when Jews come to see the Palestinians who live here, and those who were expelled, as people worth living with can we hope to live here fairly and equitably."

Geographer David Harvey (2000) has noted that there's a time and place "where alternative visions, no matter how fantastic, provide the grist for shaping powerful forces for change. I believe we are precisely at such a moment. Utopian dreams . . . are omnipresent as the hidden signifiers of our desires" (p. 195). Que se vayan todos.

References

Gordon, U. (2008). Anarchy Alive! Anti-authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory. London: Pluto Press.

Harvey, D. (2000). Spaces of Hope. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Juma', J. (2008). Open Letter to Shawn Brandt, Tyendinga Mohawk Community. June.

Kovel, J. (2007). Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine. Pluto Press: London.

Sitrin, M. (2006). Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina. San Francisco: AK Press.

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Bill Templer is a linguist based in Southeast Asia.

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URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org/templer230708.html