Dismantle Civilisation

Endgame 4, by Charles Hugh Smith, at his Of Two Minds blog.

The endgame isn’t limited to the global financial meltdown or the complete repudiation of existing debt, policies and financial structures; it includes the production of abundant food with cheap abundant energy and the resulting fertilizers and pesticides.

Knowledgeable reader Bart D. from Australia recently provided an eye-opening report on the endgame in agriculture. We all know highly productive agriculture depends (like everything else) on petroleum to move products and power equipment, but it’s not just transportation which is dependent on fossil fuels: it’s the fertilizer, too. And the same endgame applies to all other traditional resource extraction structures as well. Here are Bart’s comments:

It seems like a lot of observers who are following the financial problems are being insidiously distracted from the real ‘crisis’ looming large over the future.

The entire economic system seemingly requires abundant and cheap energy to enable the stupendous amounts of waste that a modern economy creates through its function.

It now likely that we can no longer look to the past to estimate the future. The key condition of abundant resources and spare capacity of the earth to provide for an expanding human population in probably no longer valid.

The very first time that people in developed countries experience a real shortage/ unavailability of fuel/food and discover what happens when a system gets compressed by a steadily sinking resource ‘ceiling’ … we need to expect severe ramifications.

At this point I haven’t seen anyone predict whether the developed nations of the world can gradually decline to a more equitable standard of living …. Or if the demands for war to keep a greater share of the resources to ourselves gains traction and results in the re-conquest/colonisation of africa.

I just can’t see a way beyond 2020 that doesn’t involve a massive slide in wealth for people of developed economies or a very serious de-population event (ie military or socio-economic war) that brings the total global population back into balance with what the planet needs to provide us with to live our current lifestyle.

It seems like any investment that isn’t related to good agricultural land and the capacity to farm it and protect it …. Is not really a relevant investment for the future we are heading towards. Marc Faber has picked that idea correctly.

I work in Rural Business and I can see very grave challenges facing our ability to avoid the biggest killer of people throughout history: Famine. We need too many resources, that are now in serious supply decline, to keep going as we are.

Its not realistic to ‘go organic’ at our current population level and expect to feed everyone … and that’s without the growing problem of climate uncertainty adding to the mix. There IS NO ALTERNATIVE food production system that can sustain us. Only when population levels fall to pre 1860′s levels (ie before the age of mineral fertilisers) will things stabilise again.

I believe, from a historic perspective, a breakdown in agricultural systems/ productivity and the resulting famine has been responsble for more civilisations /societies collapsing than any other factor. It’s THE thing that no one is seeing coming right now (whilst they worry about how to ride the stock market gyrations and argue the pro’s and Cons of owning gold or government bonds) and that’s why it will be such a massive event. I suspect that some time before 2020 an ounce of silver will equal the value of a bucket of wheat in some parts of the world. (ownership of gold probably having been restricted to a small military/social elite class).

I feel sorry for the people of Africa. As the weakest continent, with a lot of resources we (and China) want, they can expect the fate of the Native Americans. They’ve got what we want and they’ll be ‘eased’ out of the way. It will be the 1800′s revisited.

At this point I asked Bart about the prospects for alternative energy in the farm-economy, such as wind-generated electricity being used to power tractors.

We have some very expensive new wind farms my region. They barely supply enough electricity to power the basics for our regional population of about 15 thousand people. We still use a lot of power from a coal fired plant 300km away. I can’t imagine having enough generating capacity to run a fleet of farming vehicles.

I also can’t imagine where all the important metals used in battery/electric motor production are going to come from. I believe (according to others) we are on a downwad slope for mining and refining metal ores in that the ore grades are getting consistently lower and therefore requiring increasing amounts of energy to mine and process them into useful things.

The really major problem with Ag production at the moment though is the amount of Natural Gas used to make the nitrogen fertilisers and ag chemicals. We suffered a price rise in nitro fertilisers here of 300% in two years. Ag chemicals to control pests and diseases also had big rises. When inputs get as high as they are now, (and we HAVE to use them to get target yields and quality standards that make farming viable), when you have a dry year and fail to harvest you go broke in a serious way.

That is, the dollar loss of a crop failure now are up to 3 times higer than two years ago. That means 1 bad year now actually puts you back 3 years in dollar terms. Climate variability here has resulted in 3 failed spring rains in a row and many farmers who have been on the land for 4 or 5 generations are walking away bankrupt because they suffered the financial equivalent of 9 years of drought. Also bear in mind that our regional grain output is dropping as a result of bad seasons so we have less to export.

In other parts of our country Multi-million dollar rice mills sit idle now as there is no water in the rivers systems to irrigate. Our government is paying small block fruit growers to walk off the land and bulldoze their orchards. Why? We need the remaining water to supply cities with a combined population of about 1.2 million. Fresh food prices have doubled over last two years because irrigators are short on water and big farms are buying the water from small farms at unheard of prices to keep things functioning.

Last year, water allocations on our Murray river (biggest system in Australia) were at less than 10% of ‘normal.’

America is fortunate that it still has an abundance of good agricultural land with good rainfall compared to your population size. You should invest in low energy ways to make it work well. You, along with Russia and Eastern Europe and New Zealand should be able to feed yourselves and others in a low energy world. I think Australia is OK for food as well, but countries with a high people to ag. land ratio are heading for trouble in a world with restricted access to mineral fertilisers to make the land fertile enough to yield the required food.

All we need now is a war to use up a large portion of available world nitrate production capacity and the problem of ‘peak food productivity’ will become apparent very rapidy.

Anyone thinking they can grow enough food to survive in a suburban back yard in a energy scarce world is deluding themselves. Take a calorie counter, a pocket calculator and a crop maturity/agronomy guide and do the maths. It won’t add up to the daily calorie requirements of the 2-4 people living in an average house with an average garden, especially if your bankrupt government can”t afford to keep maintaining the water distribution network. (see Zimbabwe)

Whilst the majority wring their hands over what impact the financial crisis will have on their retirement plans or employment future … bigger things are happening more worthy of angst and multri-trillion investments.

I don’t understand why Americans are not decending on washington en-masse to stop the rot your congress and federal reserve are pumping out. You need to direct those trillions into re structuring your transport and agriculture sector. Stop the government subsidies that corrupt your farming system. The world won’t want your worthless dollars and financial instruments in the future … but a hungry person sitting in his shimmering desert or the tower blocks of Dubai will give you all the oil you want for some good American food.

Warning of world phosphate shortage.

The problem they don’t mention is that ‘extractable reserves’ will now shrink even without any actual extraction … because of the dwindling supply of cheap energy needed to mine and process what are now ‘low grade’ ores.

From: Limits to Exploitation of Nonrenewable Resources (eoearth.org):

Effects of technology and cheap energy

To some, the history of nonrenewable resource exploitation seems to contradict the idea of an energetic limit short of mining common rock and “burning” seawater [10]. During the past 150 years large increases in the earth-resource base of industrialized society have been attained. By increasing the efficiencies of discovery, recovery, processing, and application of such resources, we have been able to find and exploit leaner, deeper, and more remote deposits. By discovering and developing new methods of utilizing previously worthless materials we have created resources where none existed.

Important in this rapid technologic advance has been a progressive lowering of the cost of energy per unit of work or useful heat obtained. Cheaper energy, along with technological ingenuity and discovery, has greatly extended the availability of nonenergy resources. In 1900 the lowest grade of copper ore economically minable was about 3 percent; today the economic cutoff has fallen to about 0.35 percent; at that grade each ton of refined copper produced requires the breaking, transport, and milling of almost 300 tons of rock and, in addition, the removal of perhaps an equal amount of waste or barren rock.

A great deal of energy-about 26,000 kilowatt-hours [11], the equivalent of the energy in about 4 metric tons of Wyoming coal-is required to produce a metric ton of copper today.

This scenario equally applies to all the inputs (especially fertilisers and transport fuels) used to produce food.

On the upside, a lot more people will be needed in future to grow food. This means fewer lawers, bankers, accountants and other drains on society, who will be now required to work fields and collect human waste to fertilise them.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for this huge economic re-structure to play out. At nearly 10% depletion of oil this coming year (IEA) conversion will presumably be forced onto us in under 10 years. We will then be living in an economic system like Cuba, who lost their energy supplies when Soviet system collapsed.

Chris Martenson (see his website) defined money as a claim on future human labour. I like that.

In order for there to be future human labour, do we need banks?

No.

Do we need Cars, superannuation funds and the stock market.

No.

Do we need food and a means to get it to where it is needed to fuel the humans who do the labour?

Yes. Of course.

Let’s just say that money is a claim on food and water FIRST. Everything else is really only parsley on the plate making the world look good.

We can pressure government to make planning and spending for sustainable food production number 1 priority now … or we can wait for Mr. Market to demonstrate that ‘corrections’ also happen to markets where individual people are the units of accounting.

We also need to ask ourselves if the average billionare really expects to be able to claim THAT MUCH future human labour. What would an average billionare DO with a claim on 100 million man hours (at $10 per hour)? Build Pyramids like an Egyptian pharaoh? Conquer the world like Alexander the great? Can a billionare realistically claim those hours? Either the price of labour has to rise dramatically or a lot of dollars have to vanish to moderate this apparent imbalance. Dollars are vanishing pretty fast now, I wonder if that mean inflation in wages will also kick in soon to bridge the gap?

I wonder what the historic average is for how many man hours per year the top 1% of wealthy men commanded? Maybe a dollar should be re-badged the “Manhour”. Maybe these ‘manhours’ should come with an expiry date to prevent people hoarding them and doing stupid things like making them into derivatives, etc?

Thank you, Bart, for this excellent analysis. There is much sobering “food for thought” in contemplating the endgame depletion of soil, mineral fertilizer and cheap fossil fuels. Clearly, the obsession with “cleaning up the financial sector” so everyonce can start borrowing more than they can afford again is not just misplaced–it’s near-suicidal.

I know many observers believe genetically modified seeds which manufacture their own pesticides and additional nutrition via extra proteins, etc. may provide the answer, but even GM seeds need undepleted soil, water and transport to market. And the history of mono-crops (i.e. losing diversity of the genome via using only one variation) is not exactly encouraging.

Thus GM is easily raised from “potentially useful on the margins” (akin to shale oil) to “technological savior”–that is, a technology “fix” will keep the status quo chugging along with virtually no disruption in present production and price.

Unfortunately we’re dealing with complex, dynamically interacting systems, not a single issue. Thus “magic bullets” like GM grain seeds (patented and owned by corporations, by the way) are doomed to merely marginal effects on a planetary scale.

Although cities have efficiency benefits, and cultural benefits, we believe that most citizens are well advised to move back to the country if they can. Cities are likely to be dangerous places, and we need a lot more farmers.

GM crops will not help. They are prodcts of huge corporations who exist to make their shareholders profits, and as such are likely to fold. All large organisations are likely to fold in the not too distant future, as they need cheap abundant energy. GM isn’t proven safe anyway. Something is killing bees, it may well be GM. And the concentration of such power over the world food system as a handful of US corporation hold now is just plain wrong.

Perennial, drought tolerant vegetables could help. But people need to be moving, and starting to plant orchards and perennial plantations NOW (in fact, before now), but most people are still totally tied up in the growth system to ‘make a living’.

Charles previous endgame articles:

Endgame 3: The End of (Paying) Work
(January 21, 2009)

Endgame 2: The Injury Analogy
(January 20, 2009)

Endgame 1: Chess and Taxes
(January 19, 2009)

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by Michael Parenti, at zmag.

After the overthrow of communist governments in Eastern Europe, capitalism was paraded as the indomitable system that brings prosperity and democracy, the system that would prevail unto the end of history.

The present economic crisis, however, has convinced even some prominent free-marketeers that something is gravely amiss. Truth be told, capitalism has yet to come to terms with several historical forces that cause it endless trouble: democracy, prosperity, and capitalism itself, the very entities that capitalist rulers claim to be fostering.

Plutocracy vs. Democracy

Let us consider democracy first. In the United States we hear that capitalism is wedded to democracy, hence the phrase, “capitalist democracies.” In fact, throughout our history there has been a largely antagonistic relationship between democracy and capital concentration. Some eighty years ago Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis commented, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Moneyed interests have been opponents not proponents of democracy.

The Constitution itself was fashioned by affluent gentlemen who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to repeatedly warn of the baneful and dangerous leveling effects of democracy. The document they cobbled together was far from democratic, being shackled with checks, vetoes, and requirements for artificial super majorities, a system designed to blunt the impact of popular demands.

In the early days of the Republic the rich and well-born imposed property qualifications for voting and officeholding. They opposed the direct election of candidates (note, their Electoral College is still with us). And for decades they resisted extending the franchise to less favored groups such as propertyless working men, immigrants, racial minorities, and women.

Today conservative forces continue to reject more equitable electoral features such as proportional representation, instant runoff, and publicly funded campaigns. They continue to create barriers to voting, be it through overly severe registration requirements, voter roll purges, inadequate polling accommodations, and electronic voting machines that consistently “malfunction” to the benefit of the more conservative candidates.

At times ruling interests have suppressed radical publications and public protests, resorting to police raids, arrests, and jailings-applied most recently with full force against demonstrators in St. Paul, Minnesota, during the 2008 Republican National Convention.

The conservative plutocracy also seeks to rollback democracy’s social gains, such as public education, affordable housing, health care, collective bargaining, a living wage, safe work conditions, a non-toxic sustainable environment; the right to privacy, the separation of church and state, freedom from compulsory pregnancy, and the right to marry any consenting adult of one’s own choosing.

About a century ago, US labor leader Eugene Victor Debs was thrown into jail during a strike. Sitting in his cell he could not escape the conclusion that in disputes between two private interests, capital and labor, the state was not a neutral arbiter. The force of the state–with its police, militia, courts, and laws-was unequivocally on the side of the company bosses. From this, Debs concluded that capitalism was not just an economic system but an entire social order, one that rigged the rules of democracy to favor the moneybags.

Capitalist rulers continue to pose as the progenitors of democracy even as they subvert it, not only at home but throughout Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Any nation that is not “investor friendly,” that attempts to use its land, labor, capital, natural resources, and markets in a self-developing manner, outside the dominion of transnational corporate hegemony, runs the risk of being demonized and targeted as “a threat to U.S. national security.”

Democracy becomes a problem for corporate America not when it fails to work but when it works too well, helping the populace move toward a more equitable and livable social order, narrowing the gap, however modestly, between the superrich and the rest of us. So democracy must be diluted and subverted, smothered with disinformation, media puffery, and mountains of campaign costs; with rigged electoral contests and partially disfranchised publics, bringing faux victories to more or less politically safe major-party candidates.

Capitalism vs. Prosperity

The corporate capitalists no more encourage prosperity than do they propagate democracy. Most of the world is capitalist, and most of the world is neither prosperous nor particularly democratic. One need only think of capitalist Nigeria, capitalist Indonesia, capitalist Thailand, capitalist Haiti, capitalist Colombia, capitalist Pakistan, capitalist South Africa, capitalist Latvia, and various other members of the Free World–more accurately, the Free Market World.

A prosperous, politically literate populace with high expectations about its standard of living and a keen sense of entitlement, pushing for continually better social conditions, is not the plutocracy’s notion of an ideal workforce and a properly pliant polity. Corporate investors prefer poor populations. The poorer you are, the harder you will work-for less. The poorer you are, the less equipped you are to defend yourself against the abuses of wealth.

In the corporate world of “free-trade,” the number of billionaires is increasing faster than ever while the number of people living in poverty is growing at a faster rate than the world’s population. Poverty spreads as wealth accumulates.

Consider the United States. In the last eight years alone, while vast fortunes accrued at record rates, an additional six million Americans sank below the poverty level; median family income declined by over $2,000; consumer debt more than doubled; over seven million Americans lost their health insurance, and more than four million lost their pensions; meanwhile homelessness increased and housing foreclosures reached pandemic levels.

It is only in countries where capitalism has been reined in to some degree by social democracy that the populace has been able to secure a measure of prosperity; northern European nations such as Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark come to mind. But even in these social democracies popular gains are always at risk of being rolled back.

It is ironic to credit capitalism with the genius of economic prosperity when most attempts at material betterment have been vehemently and sometimes violently resisted by the capitalist class. The history of labor struggle provides endless illustration of this.

To the extent that life is bearable under the present U.S. economic order, it is because millions of people have waged bitter class struggles to advance their living standards and their rights as citizens, bringing some measure of humanity to an otherwise heartless politico-economic order.

A Self-devouring Beast

The capitalist state has two roles long recognized by political thinkers. First, like any state it must provide services that cannot be reliably developed through private means, such as public safety and orderly traffic. Second, the capitalist state protects the haves from the have-nots, securing the process of capital accumulation to benefit the moneyed interests, while heavily circumscribing the demands of the working populace, as Debs observed from his jail cell.

There is a third function of the capitalist state seldom mentioned. It consists of preventing the capitalist system from devouring itself. Consider the core contradiction Karl Marx pointed to: the tendency toward overproduction and market crisis. An economy dedicated to speedups and wage cuts, to making workers produce more and more for less and less, is always in danger of a crash. To maximize profits, wages must be kept down. But someone has to buy the goods and services being produced. For that, wages must be kept up. There is a chronic tendency-as we are seeing today-toward overproduction of private sector goods and services and underconsumption of necessities by the working populace.

In addition, there is the frequently overlooked self-destruction created by the moneyed players themselves. If left completely unsupervised, the more active command component of the financial system begins to devour less organized sources of wealth.

Instead of trying to make money by the arduous task of producing and marketing goods and services, the marauders tap directly into the money streams of the economy itself. During the 1990s we witnessed the collapse of an entire economy in Argentina when unchecked free marketeers stripped enterprises, pocketed vast sums, and left the country’s productive capacity in shambles. The Argentine state, gorged on a heavy diet of free-market ideology, faltered in its function of saving capitalism from the capitalists.

Some years later, in the United States, came the multi-billion-dollar plunder perpetrated by corporate conspirators at Enron, WorldCom, Harkin, Adelphia, and a dozen other major companies. Inside players like Ken Lay turned successful corporate enterprises into sheer wreckage, wiping out the jobs and life savings of thousands of employees in order to pocket billions.

These thieves were caught and convicted. Does that not show capitalism’s self-correcting capacity? Not really. The prosecution of such malfeasance- in any case coming too late-was a product of democracy’s accountability and transparency, not capitalism’s. Of itself the free market is an amoral system, with no strictures save caveat emptor.

In the meltdown of 2008-09 the mounting financial surplus created a problem for the moneyed class: there were not enough opportunities to invest. With more money than they knew what to do with, big investors poured immense sums into nonexistent housing markets and other dodgy ventures, a legerdemain of hedge funds, derivatives, high leveraging, credit default swaps, predatory lending, and whatever else.

Among the victims were other capitalists, small investors, and the many workers who lost billions of dollars in savings and pensions. Perhaps the premiere brigand was Bernard Madoff. Described as “a longstanding leader in the financial services industry,” Madoff ran a fraudulent fund that raked in $50 billion from wealthy investors, paying them back “with money that wasn’t there,” as he himself put it. The plutocracy devours its own children.

In the midst of the meltdown, at an October 2008 congressional hearing, former chair of the Federal Reserve and orthodox free-market devotee Alan Greenspan confessed that he had been mistaken to expect moneyed interests–groaning under an immense accumulation of capital that needs to be invested somewhere–to suddenly exercise self-restraint.

The classic laissez-faire theory is even more preposterous than Greenspan made it. In fact, the theory claims that everyone should pursue their own selfish interests without restraint. This unbridled competition supposedly will produce maximum benefits for all because the free market is governed by a miraculously benign “invisible hand” that optimizes collective outputs. (“Greed is good.”)

Is the crisis of 2008-09 caused by a chronic tendency toward overproduction and hyper-financial accumulation, as Marx would have it? Or is it the outcome of the personal avarice of people like Bernard Madoff? In other words, is the problem systemic or individual? In fact, the two are not mutually exclusive. Capitalism breeds the venal perpetrators, and rewards the most unscrupulous among them. The crimes and crises are not irrational departures from a rational system, but the converse: they are the rational outcomes of a basically irrational and amoral system.

Worse still, the ensuing multi-billion dollar government bailouts are themselves being turned into an opportunity for pillage. Not only does the state fail to regulate, it becomes itself a source of plunder, pulling vast sums from the federal money machine, leaving the taxpayers to bleed.

Those who scold us for “running to the government for a handout” are themselves running to the government for a handout. Corporate America has always enjoyed grants-in-aid, loan guarantees, and other state and federal subventions. But the 2008-09 “rescue operation” offered a record feed at the public trough. More than $350 billion was dished out by a right-wing lame-duck Secretary of the Treasury to the biggest banks and financial houses without oversight–not to mention the more than $4 trillion that has come from the Federal Reserve. Most of the banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of New York Mellon, stated that they had no intention of letting anyone know where the money was going.

The big bankers used some of the bailout, we do know, to buy up smaller banks and prop up banks overseas. CEOs and other top banking executives are spending bailout funds on fabulous bonuses and lavish corporate spa retreats. Meanwhile, big bailout beneficiaries like Citigroup and Bank of America laid off tens of thousands of employees, inviting the question: why were they given all that money in the first place?

While hundreds of billions were being doled out to the very people who had caused the catastrophe, the housing market continued to wilt, credit remained paralyzed, unemployment worsened, and consumer spending sank to record lows.

In sum, free-market corporate capitalism is by its nature a disaster waiting to happen. Its essence is the transformation of living nature into mountains of commodities and commodities into heaps of dead capital. When left entirely to its own devices, capitalism foists its diseconomies and toxicity upon the general public and upon the natural environment–and eventually begins to devour itself.

The immense inequality in economic power that exists in our capitalist society translates into a formidable inequality of political power, which makes it all the more difficult to impose democratic regulations.

If the paladins of Corporate America want to know what really threatens “our way of life,” it is their way of life, their boundless way of pilfering their own system, destroying the very foundation on which they stand, the very community on which they so lavishly feed.

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Peakmoment video.

In his book, The Long Descent, John Michael Greer observes that our culture has two primary stories: “Infinite Progress” or “Catastrophe”. On the contrary, he sees history as cyclic: civilizations rise and fall. Like others, ours is exhausting its resource base. Cheap energy is over. Decline is here, but the descent will be a long one. It’s too late to maintain the status quo by swapping energy sources. How to deal with this predicament? He lays out practical ideas, possibilities, and potentials, including reconnecting with natural and human capacities pushed aside by industrial life.

[www.thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com]

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A Club Orlov post, by Dmitry Orlov.

Congratulations, everyone, we have a new president: a fresh new face, a capable, optimistic, inspiring figure, ushering in a new era of responsibility, ready to confront the many serious challenges that face the nation; in short, we have us a Gorbachev. I don’t know about you, but I find the parallel rather obvious.

Obama wishes to save the economy, and to inspire us with words such as “We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.” [Inauguration speech] At the same time, he cautions us that “We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense” — an echo of Dick Cheney’s “The American way of life is non-negotiable.” And so we descend from the nonexistent but wonderfully evocative “clean coal” to the more pedestrian “Put a little dirt in your gas tank!”

But these are all euphemisms: the reality is that it is either fossil fuels, which are running out while simultaneously destabilizing the planet’s climate and poisoning the biosphere, or the end of industrial civilization, or (most likely) both, happening in that order. According to the latest International Energy Agency projections, the half-life of industrial civilization can be capped at about 17 years: it’s all downhill from here. All industrial countries will be forced to rapidly deindustrialize on this time scale, but the one that has spent the last century building an infrastructure that has no future — based on little houses interconnected by cars, with all of its associated moribund, unmaintainable systems — is virtually guaranteed to fall the hardest. An American’s two greatest enemies are his house and his car. But try telling that to most Americans, and you will get ridicule, consternation, and disbelief. Thus, the problem has no political solution. Tragically, Obama happens to be a politician.

“Whenever we confront a problem for which no political solution exists, the inevitable result is an uncomfortable impasse filled with awkward, self-censored chatter. During the Soviet establishment’s fast slide toward dissolution, Gorbachev’s glasnost campaign unleashed a torrent of words. In a sort of nation-wide talking cure, many previously taboo subjects could be broached in public, and many important problems could suddenly be discussed. An important caveat still applied: the problems always had to be cast as “specific difficulties,” or “singular problems” and never as a small piece within the larger mosaic of obvious system-wide failure. The spell was really only broken by Yeltsin, when, in the aftermath of the failed putsch, he forcefully affixed the prefix “former” to the term “Soviet Union.” At that point, old, pro-Soviet, now irrelevant standards of patriotic thought and behavior suddenly became ridiculous — the domain of half-crazed, destitute pensioners, parading with portraits of Lenin and Stalin. By then, fear of political reprisals had already faded into history, but old habits die hard, and it took years for people’s thinking to catch up with the new, post-imperial reality. It was not an easy transition, and many remained embittered for life.

“In today’s America, it is also quite possible to talk about separate difficulties and singular problems, provided they are kept separate and singular and served up under a patriotic sauce with a dash of optimism on top. It is quite possible to refer to depressed areas, to the growing underclass and even to human rights abuses. It is, however, not allowable to refer to America as a chronically depressed country, an increasingly lower-class and impoverished country or a country that fails to take care of its citizens and often abuses them. Yes, there are prisons where heroin addicts are strapped to a chair while they go through withdrawal, a treatment so effective that some of them have to be carried out in body bags later, but that, you see, is a specific difficulty, a singular problem, if you will. But, no no no, we are a decent, freedom-loving country in spite of such little problems. We just have a slight problem with the way we all treat each other… and others. We did recently invade a country that had posed no threat to us and caused about a half a million civilian deaths there, but no no no, we are a freedom-loving country! That is just a specific difficulty with our foreign policy, not a true reflection of our national character (which is to squirm when presented with unpleasant facts and to roll our eyes when someone draws general conclusions from them based on a preponderance of evidence).

“When it comes to collapse mitigation, there is no one who will undertake an organized effort to make the collapse survivable, to save what can be saved and to avert the catastrophes that can still be averted. We will all do our best to delay or avert the collapse, possibly bringing it on sooner and making it worse. Constitutionally incapable of conceiving of a future that does not include the system that sustains our public personae, we will prattle on about a bright future for the country for as long as there is enough electricity to power the video camera that is pointed at us. Gorbachev’s perestroika is an example of just such an effort at self-delusion: he gave speeches that ran to several hours, devoted to mystical entities such as the “socialist marketplace.” He only paused to drink water — copious amounts of it, it seemed — causing people to wonder whether there was a chamber pot inside his podium.

“There are few grounds for optimism when it comes to organizing a timely and successful effort at collapse mitigation. Nevertheless, miracles do happen. For instance, in spite of inadequate preparation, in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, none of the high-grade nuclear fissile material has ended up in the hands of terrorists, and although there were a few reports of radiation leaks, nothing happened that approached the scale of the Chernobyl catastrophe. In other ways, the miserable experience had by all was mitigated by the very nature of the Soviet system, as I described in Chapter 3. No such automatic windfalls are due the United States; here, collapse preparation, if any, is likely to be the result of an overdue, haphazardly organized and hasty effort.” [Reinventing Collapse, pp. 108-110]

I sincerely hope that Obama manages to do better for himself than Gorbachev. History can be mean to do-gooders. On that fateful day when Gorbachev lost his job, his wife suffered a stroke, and he, since that day, hasn’t been able to wipe that deer-in-the-headlights look off his face. Trying to solve problems that have no solution is a fine thing to try to do. Even if it is utterly futile, it makes for great drama. But I hope, for his sake, that Obama doesn’t give up any of his hobbies. should he still have any.

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The hopes for Barack Obama’s presidency are sky-high.

Original article at revcom.us

That’s hardly surprising. In a country where not so long ago mobs of angry whites gathered in the North to burn out any Black family that tried to move into their neighborhood, or joined in packs in the South to carry out horrific lynching murders of Black people—and then bragged about it…a Black candidate has won the highest office. In a society where discrimination in education and hiring still keeps the Black unemployment rate more than double that of whites…where on any given day 1 in 9 young Black men are in prison and where a young man with black or brown skin risks being blown away for nothing every time he encounters the police…Barack Obama will soon be sworn in as the chief executive—and commander-in-chief—of that same society.

So today you hear some people say, “It’s a new America.” Others go so far as to call it a “revolution.” And even the more sober say, “Well, it won’t change everything and it might not even change that much…but you gotta admit, something big has happened here.” Even if the long dark night may not be over, some say, the election of Obama gives them hope that the dawn may be breaking.

Well, yes, something big has happened. But what?

Redeeming the Dream of America?

The widespread feeling that this election signals both a turning point in, and even a reaffirmation of, American history and society is being pumped out first and foremost by Obama himself, who stated in his election-night victory speech, that: “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”

Now many things certainly are possible in America. It is possible in America for European settlers to commit genocide against the Native American Indians who lived here and to then declare themselves to be builders of a “shining city on a hill” and “the last best hope of mankind.” It is possible in America to kidnap over ten million Africans and hold them and their descendants in slavery for 250 years, exploiting them as the foundation of the great wealth of this country, and then maintaining their descendants in new forms of oppression and super-exploitation, and to simultaneously brag that “the dream of our founders” is based on the principle that “all men are created equal.” It is possible in America to wage and sponsor wars and military coups over the past 150 years that have taken a toll on humanity unmatched by any of the fabled monstrous empires of the past, and to then routinely declare, as Barack Obama did in his speech, that this same country is the world’s great guarantor of “peace and security”— even as he preceded that by assuring anybody who opposed what he called the “new dawn of American leadership” that “we will defeat you.” It is possible in America to subordinate the economies of entire nations to the demands and dictates of U.S. capital; and it is possible to then both super-exploit impoverished people from those countries who then desperately seek work in the U.S. and at the same time to demonize them and scapegoat them as the cause of everyone else’s hard times. It is possible to torture in the name of “safety,” even as you assure the world you don’t.

But apparently, other things are NOT so possible in America. It has NOT been possible in America to actually do away with the structures of white supremacy and the oppression of entire peoples. It has NOT proven possible to cease the wanton and repeated murders of Black, Latino and other people of color by the police—with the most recent instance in Oakland, California, this very month, as police shot a 22-year-old butcher’s apprentice, Oscar Grant III, as he lay face down. It has NOT been possible in America to desist from sending troops, CIA spies, and commandos all over the world—nor has it been possible to avoid things like killing 40 civilians at a wedding party in Afghanistan on the day before the election which installed a man who has promised to send 20,000 to 30,000 more troops to invade that tortured, beleaguered country. It has NOT been possible in America to actually overcome the subjugation of women in every sphere of life, or to end the demonization and systematic discrimination against gay people. It has NOT been possible for America to refrain from the heedless plunder and spoliation of the very planet on which we live. It has NOT been possible in America to overcome the deadening alienation of everyday life for most people, or the despair of seeing your best efforts come to naught for many of those who want to dedicate themselves to making things better.

Clearly, Barack Obama to the contrary, all things are not possible in America—and some very bad and ugly things not only are possible, but seem to be “standard operating procedure” in the USA. So, yes, “change is coming”—but perhaps we’d better ask a little harder what kind of change.

The System Has Rules

The truth is this: even if Barack Obama had the best intentions in the world…even if he was in fact a secret radical, determined to use the system to benefit the people…even if all the reactionaries he has already brought into his administration are merely a clever device he is using to lull the enemy to sleep so he can stealthily revolutionize America…he couldn’t do it.

What has proven to be possible—and what has proven NOT to be possible—has nothing to do with “human nature” or “personal responsibility”…and everything to do with the system that was put in place to ensure “the dreams of our founders.” Now, to say that this is a system is not a curse-word; it just means that there are rules to the game, and if you don’t play by those rules the game stops working. What we need to do is examine those rules, and what they give rise to.

Rule Number One of this system is that nothing happens unless someone can make a profit off it. Where does that profit come from? The capitalist class—the relative handful which owns or controls the means of production (the land, resources, factories, etc.)—extracts that profit from the proletariat—the worldwide class of people which owns nothing but its ability to work, and therefore must work for others to survive. From small children in Pakistan, sewing together soccer balls with their tiny fingers for 20 hours a day….to Mexican peasants driven from their land and risking their lives in the sweltering Arizona desert in a desperate search for work…to the miners who can barely breathe from the coal dust in their lungs…to the people, young and old, haunting the street corners in every city of the world, hoping for work…capitalism can only live, like Dracula, by grinding the blood and flesh and dreams of billions into profit for a handful. This process, repeated billions of times daily, piles up wealth and power at one end, and misery and despair at the other. This is exploitation—and it is the beating heart of the system we live under. And when its own built-in barriers begin to make it more difficult to successfully carry out that exploitation—as is happening today in very sharp forms—those billions who produced that wealth are the ones who are cast aside as garbage, and suffer the worst.

Rule Number Two is that the individual capitalists (or “blocs of capital”) must battle each other for survival. Those capitalists who do not constantly expand run the risk of being driven under by others. Sometimes it takes expression in the kind of drama we see today, where big corporations are collapsing or being bought out. Sometimes it takes the form of horrible wars of slaughter, either between empires, or to further subjugate the oppressed. But the underlying rule is the same: expand or die.

And, oh yes, Rule Number Three: anything that gets in the way of America being the number one empire in the world must be brought to heel, or crushed.

Those basic rules determine what is or is not possible in America. Those are the rules that drive forward and determine the shape of American society. Those are the rules that are either very directly, or ultimately, behind every oppressive institution, and every outrage, in American society.

And those are the rules which Barack Obama must and will play by—and enforce. Every thing that Barack Obama does—how he uses the vast army at his command; who gets put into the nightmarish network of prisons he controls; what kinds of economic programs are put into place, with what kinds of consequences for which classes and groups of people—all this will be decided on those terms.

And what would happen if Obama did try to change the “rules of the game?” Before very long at all, the game could not continue. And if you should be so foolish as to not immediately return to the rules, those who really control things will have you removed from the game.

Obama’s Real Program

But in point of actual fact, Barack Obama does NOT intend to make any radical change—at least any radical change for the better. He doesn’t even promise it. He talks about “rescuing” the capitalist economic structure. He talks about, and plans on, sending thousands more troops around the world to enforce American domination over other peoples. The carnage in Gaza elicits no criticism from Obama, and there is no doubt whatsoever that he will “honor his commitment to stand by Israel”—in plain talk, to back up and utilize it as the American attack dog in the Middle East, in which every crime it carries out is justified and defended. Obama’s role will be to put a new face on the essential policies that billions of people around the world, and in this country too, came to despise George W. Bush for: the wars for empire based on lies, and the cruel and widespread repression not only within this country but around the world. And to the extent that Obama does change some of Bush’s policies—as he very likely will—this will be either a matter of casting aside things which “haven’t worked” (for imperialism, that is) or maintaining some credibility and support among different sections of the people (here and worldwide) for policies that pertain to more overall needs of empire.

What makes it even more dangerous is precisely Obama’s ability to manipulate the hopes and ideals of those who have hated and opposed the crimes and outrages that have gone on for generations—as well as those who have come, righteously, to hate Bush in particular. All these people yearn to live in a better, a more just and meaningful society. Yes, Obama calls on them to serve something higher than their own narrow self-interest—but they will soon find out that the service to which they are summoned is the reinforcement of the empire, not the liberation of those oppressed by it. Some compare Obama to John F. Kennedy, who said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” But all too many forget how JFK then sent those who were inspired by those words to kill and die in a genocidal war for empire in Vietnam, or to otherwise serve the empire. This is NOT a future that you should want—indeed, THIS IS A FUTURE THAT YOU SHOULD RESIST, BEGINNING NOW.

There is a further cruel irony in Obama’s ascendancy. The word has been put out by the powers-that-be that Obama’s victory shows that racism is basically gone in American society. Obama himself refused in his campaign to discuss the ongoing and bitter discrimination and oppression facing Black people in every arena of American life. Instead, he made speeches that excoriated Black youth for a lack of “personal responsibility.” He shrugs off—and in fact covers over—the real structures of white supremacy in this country—again, brought home so sharply just recently in the case of Oscar Grant III. In doing so he sets the victims of white supremacy up to be demonized, imprisoned and even worse when they run up against those still all-too-real facts of American life. This system has no future for the masses of Black youth—what is different now is that the powers-that-be have established someone who did make it out in the highest office of the land to blame and, yes, oppress those youth.

And to those who once knew better but now say that Obama makes them “feel good” about being an American—there is no end of things that are very bad for you in the long run but make you feel good right now. Cocaine, for instance. Coke feels real good, and it makes you think you can do great things. You tell the ones who warn you “don’t worry I know how to handle it” and then you get angry at them for not letting you enjoy the high…and then one day you’re doing shit you never would have believed you could, and you wonder how it happened.

The System in Crisis

So, yes, it is significant—it is very significant—that Obama has become president. But not for the reasons you may think. Those who actually do decide things feel that these are dangerous times for the empire. Their “war on terror” has run into reverses and has lost the support of many people. Yet at the very time this is so, their “need” for empire compels them to carry out even more aggression—from Afghanistan to Iran, from Palestine to Pakistan to who knows where else. They are neck-deep in the worst financial crisis in at least 80 years, with people facing tremendous hardship and capital itself facing real barriers to expansion. And on top of all this, there is widespread loss of faith in and alienation from the government, and a “crisis of meaning” in people’s lives, and in the society broadly. In these desperate times the rulers of this country have played a “trump card”—they have installed a Black president in a country which has been known for its racism since before Day One. They put a new face on a rotting, if still powerful and vicious and extremely oppressive, system. They intend through this to channel people’s aspirations into a dead-end—a dead-end of serving the very system that grinds up millions and billions, just like them. That is the change Barack Obama represents.

Whether this will work—whether people will be not just fooled but enlisted in an enterprise opposed to the interests of humanity and, in the final analysis, to their own fundamental interests and best aspirations—is far from certain. But all it takes is for you, and millions like you, to keep following along, telling yourself, and others, to “give Obama a chance.” Keep doing that, and the people who run this system will, once again, bludgeon their way through the crisis they face.

But there IS another possible future, a far better one—one we can achieve through making revolution, and continuing to make revolution, until all relations of exploitation, and all the social institutions and ideas that reflect and reinforce those relations, are abolished.

On that note, we’ll close with a point made by our Chairman, Bob Avakian:

To those who say we should “give Obama a chance”—the question is: a chance to do what?

Obama has no problem with this system that causes so much misery and oppression, death and destruction, for so many people throughout the world—he is anxious to take over as head of this system. His problem is that this system is in serious crisis and faces all kinds of heavy challenges.

For those who really want an end to oppression, injustice and unjust war, our problem is this system. Our challenge is to make revolution to get rid of this system and emancipate all of humanity from its horrors.

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“King spoke Truth to Power, while Obama spoke Lies to get in Power.
One might say that other than that, and other than the fact that King stood up to end Black people’s suffering while Obama stood silent in the face of it, they’re just alike.”

An interview with Juan Santos, who is a member of the Aztlan Mexica Nation Harmony Keepers/American Indian Movement, and author of the essays Barack Obama and the “End” of Racism, and Obama’s Denial: The Fear of a Black Messiah. Juan is also a regular contributor to this blog.

Andrea Luchetta interviewed him for a feature piece on Obama’s inauguration for the Italian daily Il Manifesto. The following is the full text of that interview.

Luchetta: I‘ve interviewed Ms. Makeeba Lloyd, of the “Harlem4Obama Commitee”. According to her, racism is nowadays a minor problem. The main conflict, for her, is of a class nature, rather than racial in nature. The social dividing line, she says, is now between the rich and the poor, not between the white and the black. What do you think of this position?

Santos: This is nonsense, Lloyd’s claim is in line with Barack Obama’s utterly false claim that peoples of color are “90% of the way to equality” with whites in the US.

Ms. Lloyd is wrong. The poverty line is a race line. Race determines who is poor and who is not. Roughly a quarter of black and brown people in the US live in poverty, while less than 1/10th of Euro-Americans live in poverty. A black person in the US is 3 times more likely to be poor than a white person.

That’s 90% of the way to “equality”?

No. The very best thing I can say about the idea that peoples of color are approaching equality with whites in the US is that it is an example of extremely bad math, or of people promoting an illusion in hopes that it will come true.

Black unemployment in the US is currently at 11.1% – almost double the average for white people, whose rate of unemployment is 5.9%. Among the general population, – by which I mean those outside of the reservation system that imprisons Native Americans on the remnants of their lands – Blacks have the highest rate of unemployment in the US, followed by Latinos, at 8.8%. Among Black youth unemployment reaches a stunning 32.3 %. From 1976 through today, a new study shows, Latino unemployment rates typically exceeded that of the white population by some 65%. The absolute rate of unemployment for Native Americans on the reservations is, however, roughly SEVENTY PER CENT.

50% of Native American reservation homes have no phones and 1/5 of the homes lack complete kitchen facilities.

It might be interesting to show these figures to Ms. Lloyd to see if, reading them, she is still willing to claim a distinction between a race divide and a class divide in the US.

But economics is by no means the only measure of equality.

Race also determines who is imprisoned and who is not.

Black people in the US are 8.5 times more likely than whites to be imprisoned.

On any given day 1 in 9 young Black men are in prison.

Latinos are 4 times more likely to go to prison than white people.

68% of all U.S. prisoners are people of color, although Black, Latinos and officially recognized Native Americans together make up slightly less than 25% of the overall population of the U.S.

The US has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world. It is a system of mass imprisonment aimed at the control of people of color, who, the elites fear, have the potential to violently and politically rebel again as they did in the 1960s. People in other parts of the world simply cannot begin to imagine the conditions that exist here; the US holds 25% of the world’s prisoners – a Gulag comprised mostly of prisoners from the minority populations of African and Native American descent – Blacks and Latinos.

This is no “minor problem,” contrary to what Ms. Lloyd suggests. It is a form of mass social control of potentially dissident and rebellious populations based on race and class status. Ms. Lloyd has missed the point entirely.

It’s not a matter of race versus class – race and class are in many ways one thing here in the US.

Usually that kind of system is called a caste system. Despite a few exceptions, like Obama himself, that’s exactly what exists in the US: a caste system.

What the white ruling class did here was this: following the mass rebellions and the burning of major US cities in the 1960s, the white ruling class decided on a strategy of divide and conquer. They created a Black middle class almost overnight, largely using government employment to do so, while at the same time they found another way to deal with the millions of people of color who could not fit into the system; mass imprisonment. These developments are 2 sides of the same coin. Ms. Lloyd’s failure to see this is why she can make the kind of mistakes of analysis she’s making. See this link.

Luchetta: You wrote that the price for Obama’s election was silence about the racial question. Yet, don’t you think, as many participants to the “Great Harlem Debate” have suggested, that his silence was rather tactical?

Santos: Yes it was tactical, but the question is this; what strategy did the tactic serve?

And: Who did that strategy serve? And: Who did that strategy harm?

As someone put it, “Hope is not a strategy.” Hope is nothing but a slogan.

And here’s another question.

If, as Obama claimed, Blacks in the US are “90%” of the way to equality with whites, then why was the tactic of silence necessary in the first place?

If this claim were the truth and not a lie, anyone could talk openly about race and discrimination, openly celebrate the reality that there is only 1/10th of the way left to go, and put forward plans to quickly eliminate the remaining 10% of the problem. If this were true, such a campaign would draw millions upon millions forward as volunteers, people who would be thankful with all of their hearts, joyful to be part of the push to bring racism in this former Apartheid state to its complete end.

If racism were 90% eradicated in the US, if Blacks and other peoples of color were 90% of the way to equality, there would be absolutely no reason or need for silence.

If 9 out of 10 former racists were no longer racists, the tiny number which remained would already be isolated and powerless. There would be no need for a tactic of silence about racial oppression, because the racists who remained would be so small a group that they could not change the outcome of an election – not against a population that was 90% anti-racist or non-racist. But Obama’s claim was a conscious lie, as I demonstrated in answer 1. There I dealt with the quantifiable measures – the facts of social inequality which disprove Obama’s claim. The verifiable, statistical facts disprove Obama’s claim, and they are widely available for anyone to see who cares.

Obama’s silence showed one thing- that he knew his claim about equality was false, that he knew that to dare to talk openly about race and oppression would alienate the millions of white center-right voters whose support he needed to win the election.

So, Obama’s strategy was to give those voters what they wanted to hear, and to give them silence on what they didn’t want to hear. The tactic he used to give them what they wanted to hear was to offer the lie about “90% equality.” This erased any need on the part of his white audience, the white electorate, to deal honestly with the actual conditions of people of color here in the US. They could believe the lie of racial progress, and never have to think about the millions in poverty and the millions more in prison. That worked just fine for Obama.

Instead of blaming the system and white racism for the conditions of Black people, he could blame Black youth for a lack of “personal responsibility” – that’s exactly the tactic of white racists, and it looks like that is what Obama means by creating “unity” between peoples of color and white people – to unite with white racists in their tactic of blaming the victim of racism for the impacts of racism.

That’s the same kind of logic wife beaters use to justify their brutality.

In effect, Obama filled the silence about the actual conditions of peoples of color with the lie about an “equality” that clearly does not exist, and with a tactic of blaming the victim. So, looking back, it wasn’t really silence at all. It wasn’t wrong to say that this silence was the price of Obamas’ election, but more basically, the price of his election was a price now being paid by Gazans, and by the hungry, incarcerated and unemployed people of color in the US.

A lie filled the silence and took the place of the truths that demanded to be spoken and dealt with. Obama’s strategy and tactics served white racism and served to deeply harm peoples of color by erasing our conditions of life from the imagination of the majority here.

Claiming that Gazans have “almost achieved equality” with Israelis would not make it so, and remaining silent about the rain of bombs will not make them stop exploding. Obama has remained silent about the literal bombs in Gaza, and he has remained silent about the explosively unjust social conditions for people here. In both cases, the bombs keep falling, people keep going hungry, and here, the US Gulag continues to devour the lives of millions of imprisoned people of color.

Along with the wealthy Anglo ruling elite, that’s who his strategy served, and that’s who his strategy harmed.

Yes, Obama’s Black supporters you interviewed in Harlem were correct.

The silence was, in fact, a tactic.

Luchetta: Why don’t you seem to believe in the possibility of a change coming from within the institutional framework? What is then the possible alternative?

Santos: Change won’t come from within the system because the wealthy profit from the mass impoverishment of peoples of color here and around the world – wherever their money can penetrate to get the cheapest labor for the most work. Having a color- based caste who you can discriminate against increases the rate of profit. They also profit at the expense of the Earth; they profit from the Earth’s destruction – actually, and in practice, they profit at the expense of all life. They’re not going to give that up because someone votes for them to give it up. They have police and military power at their disposal, and the bullet always trumps the ballot.

Racism rewards the powerful. They have no reason to stop racism unless its continuance results in a level of resistance that endangers the system of profit itself.

To put it in plain words, the system rewards the rich for hurting people. So, from their emotionally deadened standpoint, and given their control of the bullet, why should anything change?
For me, the most important example of an alternative is the EZLN; the Zapatistas and the Mayan people of Chiapas in Mexico are a shining example. They have found a striking balance between autonomy and resistance, and between self determination and the nurturing of their culture and the Earth. The Mayan people have a profound sense of the meaning and potentials of our times. I’m an indigenist and associated with the American Indian Movement.
I’m also enamored of Evo Morales and his MAS party in Bolivia, and I have an intellectual and moral admiration for Hugo Chavez, for his willingness to confront the US and Israel, and to unite other oppressed nations in a bloc of opposition to imperial hegemony, but not for his personal style of management or emotional tone.

And at this juncture in history anyone with a heart has to admire Hamas; I do, even though I don’t view them as a viable alternative… but, then, I don’t have to; it’s not my place to make that determination. I’m not Palestinian.

But, finally, the all-but undeniable reality is that the Empire cultures like the US and the European powers are quickly heading toward “the trash bin of history.”

Their systems are completely irrational, and tend to eat themselves – and the Earth – and us – alive. They have no future.

Increasingly, it seems, the writing is on the wall, and in the hearts of people around the world. I think the alternative is to begin to build a new way and a new culture, establishing autonomy and independence and sustainability for ourselves as communities, even as these Empires collapse as flat as the two skyscrapers in New York a few years ago. One good collapse deserves another, I always say.

Luchetta: You seem quite skeptical toward Obama’s rhetoric. What is the “Change” that Harlem’s people would really need? Which actions would be needed to tackle the racial question?

Santos: Well, we’ve seen plenty of “change” since the 1960s. But what people forget right now is the common folk wisdom that “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Really, the only thing the system can do for us is collapse, go away, and get out of our lives. I’m a big fan of the American Indian Movement slogan that says, “U.S. out of North America!”

Really, the system can’t do anything to change the caste system that it’s founded on and that it relies on for its continued profit and its continued existence.

As far as tackling the race question goes, they can never tackle it from our perspective and for our good. Just like in the 60s and 70s, they can only tackle the race problem – their race problem, not ours.

We are their race problem, and I’ve never been one to ask bullies to tackle me. It’s not a sound or productive strategy.

Luchetta: Don’t you think that, if compared with the situation of the Civil Rights Movement era, a lot of progress has been made on the racial question?

Santos: Again, the old folk saying; “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

My answer?

Sure, if you count a new Black middle class, on one hand, combined with the mass incarceration of peoples of color on the other, and a day to day war in our neighborhoods called the “War on Drugs” – which is really a “War on Us” – if you want to count that as “progress” …then yes, there’s been “progress.” But anyone who actually believes that that is “progress” is lying to themselves.

At the systemic level, there’s been no qualitative, fundamental “change” at all, really. But at the cultural level, yes, there’s been change, and that change – with all of its dramatic difference and all of its dramatic limits, is what Barack Obama represents at his best – as a cultural symbol, not as a champion of the People.

But, yes there has been a limited but very welcome change in people’s attitudes, ethics and their emotional and cultural open-ness. That much has changed. The system, though, hasn’t changed at all.

Luchetta: Why, in your opinion, is Barack Obama often compared with JFK?

Santos: It’s a kind of obvious comparison in terms of their charisma, their intelligence, and their ages. But, it’s not just their personalities or spirits. January 2009 is very much like the period of JFK’s reign. Then – looking back on it now, it’s plain to see that there were two major trajectories the world could take – toward Nuclear Holocaust or toward a Cultural Renaissance. As it turned out, the cultural Renaissance, an effort toward Cultural Revolution, was the path taken from the bottom-up.

The Ecological Holocaust we face today is very similar in it’s meaning to Nuclear Holocaust, and, according to Michael Oritz Hill, the author of a book called Dreaming the End of the World – which is focused on people’s dreams about Nuclear Holocaust and Ecological Holocaust, there are even deep correspondences and similarities between the symbols in these kinds of dreams. By the same token, the feeling is thick in the air today, at least here in California, that another cultural Renaissance is being primed; A Green Renaissance – no, not a “green economic stimulus” – something more profound, and from the bottom-up is coming; that’s how it feels now. I’m sure that if you were in San Francisco or Greenwich Village in the early 60’s, it felt pretty similar.

In the early 60s, Kennedy embodied both potentials, for renewal and destruction. Obama is like that, too – a mix of contradictory elements and psychological, cultural and political trends embodied in a single, charismatic leader. Neither of them brought any focus whatsoever on paths to liberation.

Kennedy was an imperialist and a Cold Warrior. Obama is the 21st century equivalent of Kennedy – a smart Hawk whose basic commitment is to the existence and furtherance of capitalist imperialism.

As a fine essay in Revolution points out, Kennedy sent the young and hopeful he’d inspired to die and carry out imperial genocide in Viet Nam.

Obama will do the same in Afghanistan, and, perhaps, Iran.

Beyond that; moving out of the Bush era is not unlike moving out of the 50’s and the McCarthy era here, out of a time of a deep grey repression into open air and sunlight. Just getting finished with the Bush years is enough to give people “hope.” Obama just stepped up and rode that wave; he didn’t inspire it; he was just the one to ride it –he was a “fit.”

There are lots of little correspondences; John McCain, Obama’s rival, was almost as stiff and bad on television as Richard Nixon, Kennedy’s rival.

History and Time run in circles and spirals and cycles, not in straight lines. Things come back around. The world is a complete circle. In fact, the Aztec (Mexica) name for the world was Cem Anahautl – “Complete Circle.”

Luchetta: Why did most black people vote for Obama? And why did the US choose a black president just now?

Santos: Because he’s Black. Because Black people are routinely and systematically excluded from full participation and any kind of empowerment in US society, Because they dared to “hope” he might actually turn out to be one of their own, to actually turn the tide for them, despite the political evidence to the contrary. It was largely a symbolic vote, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t truly important at the level of culture. In fact, symbols are, in many ways, the substance of culture.

Look, the guy’s smart, charismatic, and his game is really complex. There is no way that it would be right to “blame” most black people for not seeing through the complex political game, and there is no way that one could fail to love Black people when you take even a second to see it through their eyes; to so many the election of Barack Obama looked exactly like the fulfillment of the Dream – Martin Luther King’s Dream. In one way, in terms of what it said about the changing culture, it had an element of truth, at least in part. At the level of the system, it has no truth at all.

Nor is it the case that Obama represents anything like the values King held to his heart – quite the opposite.

King spoke Truth to Power, while Obama spoke Lies to get in Power.

One might say that other than that, and other than the fact that King stood up to end Black people’s suffering while Obama stood silent in the face of it, they’re just alike.
—–
Juan

Juan Rafael Santos is a Los Angeles based writer and editor. His essays can be found at: http://the-fourth-world.blogspot.com /. He can be reached at: Juan_Santos@Mexica.net.

Andrea

Andrea Luchetta is a dog-provided student in international history and politics, in Geneva. He comes from Trieste, which is for sure the most windy town in the world. He can be reached at: andrealuchetta@hotmail.it

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Original article at IslamOnline.

As their army is continuing its deadly blitz in the bombed-out Gaza Strip, Israeli farmers are reporting a wide-scale boycott of their produce by Arab and European countries over the Israeli onslaught in Gaza.

“We export persimmons, and because of the fighting a number of countries and distributors are canceling orders,” Giora Almagor, a fruit grower, told the Yediot Aharonot on Friday, January 16.

He said that many fruits shipments to Jordan have been cancelled.

“The produce stays packed in warehouses, and this is causing us massive losses.

“The longer the fruit waits in storage after sorting, the more its quality decreases. We also have to pay for cooling the merchandise that should have already left, and the cost in considerable.”

Many Scandinavian countries have also cancelled fruit shipments from Israel over the ongoing attacks in Gaza.

“It’s mostly Sweden, Norway, and Denmark,” said Ilan Eshel, director of the Organization of Fruit Growers in Israel.

“In Scandinavia the tendency is general, and it may come to include all of the chains.”

A number of British companies have also halted prospective deals with Israeli firms.

“There have been two or three small information technology companies who refused proposals by Israeli companies to do business,” Gil Erez, the Israeli commercial attaché in Britain, said Thursday.

British writers have also run articles calling for a boycott of Israeli products over attacks in Gaza.

In Turkey, the union of Turkish cooperatives has announced an embargo on financing purchases from Israel.

Malaysian traders have also spearheaded a campaign to boycott American and Israeli products.

It’s Gaza

Israeli farmers blame the world boycott of the Israeli products on the deadly Israeli attacks in Gaza.

“Until the operation began we had excellent business,” said Almagor, the fruit grower.

At least 1,143 Palestinians, including 355 children, have been killed and 5,130 wounded in a three-week Israeli onslaught in Gaza.

A 14-year-old Palestinian boy was killed early Friday and several people were wounded in an Israeli air strike on the Shabura refugee camp in southern Gaza.

Israeli planes also attacked 40 targets across the densely-populated strip on Friday.

Israeli tanks withdrew from the Gaza City neighborhood of Tal Al-Hawa, where clashes leveled parts of the residential area and set a hospital ablaze.

At least 23 bodies were pulled from the rubble in Tal Al-Hawa and elsewhere.

Israeli farmers warn that more world countries will boycott Israeli products as long as Israeli attacks in Gaza continue.

“It’s getting worse, and more voices can be heard calling to boycott Israeli merchandise,” said Almagor.

And the Palestine Chronicle reports that academics and artists are signing their opposition to Israel’s genocidal invasion.

By UK Academics – London

The massacres in Gaza are the latest phase of a war that Israel has been waging against the people of Palestine for more than 60 years. The goal of this war has never changed: to use overwhelming military power to eradicate the Palestinians as a political force, one capable of resisting Israel’s ongoing appropriation of their land and resources. Israel’s war against the Palestinians has turned Gaza and the West Bank into a pair of gigantic political prisons. There is nothing symmetrical about this war in terms of principles, tactics or consequences. Israel is responsible for launching and intensifying it, and for ending the most recent lull in hostilities.

Israel must lose. It is not enough to call for another ceasefire, or more humanitarian assistance. It is not enough to urge the renewal of dialogue and to acknowledge the concerns and suffering of both sides. If we believe in the principle of democratic self-determination, if we affirm the right to resist military aggression and colonial occupation, then we are obliged to take sides… against Israel, and with the people of Gaza and the West Bank.

We must do what we can to stop Israel from winning its war. Israel must accept that its security depends on justice and peaceful coexistence with its neighbours, and not upon the criminal use of force.

We believe Israel should immediately and unconditionally end its assault on Gaza, end the occupation of the West Bank, and abandon all claims to possess or control territory beyond its 1967 borders. We call on the British government and the British people to take all feasible steps to oblige Israel to comply with these demands, starting with a programme of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

By Artists Around the World

We regard Israel’s indiscriminate killing in Gaza as a crime against humanity. We protest against Israel’s exterminating tactics and offer our wholehearted support to the people of Gaza.

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In the Name of God; the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Reprinted from Palestinian Chronicle.

Since the letter was sent, Venezuela has broken off diplomatic ties with Israel, as has Bolivia.

President Hugo Chavez,

Your Excellency, President Hugo Chavez,

We, the people of Palestine, commend your courage to speak and act upon your conscience regardless of your detractors’ criticism or cowardice.

Mr. President, we have watched death rain upon our families and children in Gaza for weeks; and yet we stand proud and ready for any outcome. We are a resilient people who wish for peace but will fight rather than bow to injustice. We live and die by the codes of our forefathers – codes of honor, integrity, truth and bravery.

Throughout history, in a just conflict, there always emerges a champion, a single hero who, by his actions, embodies all the virtues the masses aspire to. You have demonstrated that you are such a man.

We have observed your commitment to the destitute and disenfranchised since you first took office. The Americas are fortunate that your presidency has not only survived but emerged as a paradigm to be emulated. You have boldly said what the world’s masses feel – from speaking out against the sulphur of imperialism at the United Nations in 2006 through to the recent expulsion of the devil’s minion.

Mr. President, we were eager to meet you in the summer of 2007; but unfortunately yet another blockade by the Israelis, who control our ports and borders, suspended our plans. As we began the truce which we initiated, they were already planning the destruction of our infrastructure.

The Israelis slowly and deliberately began reducing the presence of journalists and denying humanitarian groups access to Gaza over the past 6 months. They reduced the number of trucks bringing supplies from several thousand to a handful each month. And since they began their bombing campaign, food and fuel are scarce. In fact, only 9 of 47 bakeries produce bread, only 5% of industrial operations function and wastewater pumping stations have shut down, flooding raw sewage into populated areas, farmland and the sea.

We do not know who among us will remain alive once this barbaric onslaught is ended. But we remain, as a people and a government, undeterred in our belief that justice will reign.

We can ask no more of you than you have already done – for you have proven that a nation cannot be cowed simply because it drives its own destiny, nor will a leader lose his throne for challenging imperialism. We salute the citizens of Venezuela for choosing President Chavez; and we commend you for being among the few leaders of this age who put people before politics.

I may not live to honor our commitment to meet you; but our people will not rest until they have sent a delegation to meet the man who put politics aside, spoke with honor and acted with courage.

Very Truly Yours,
Dr. Ahmed Yousef

Deputy of the Minister of Foreign Affairs
Former Political Advisor to the Prime Minister Ismael Hanniya

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Greenpeace have bought a lot of land in the middle of the proposed Heathrow expansion, and are asking people to sign up to become joint owners, further complicating the UK government’s compulsory purchase and runway building plans.

Further info about Airplot.

It started like most good ideas around here, with a conversation down at the pub. And there have been many times over the last few months when I wasn’t sure we were going to pull it off, but we’re now the proud owners of a small piece of land within the site of the proposed third runway at Heathrow.

We’re expecting the government will announce that they’re going ahead with expansion at Heathrow this week and we now need you to join us. Sign up now to get your own piece of the plot. It’s not a financial thing, but you will be included as an owner on the legal deed of trust.

The expansion plans would make Heathrow airport the largest single source of carbon dioxide in the UK. Sign up to become a joint owner and help stop Heathrow Airport expansion.

Heathrow expansion isn’t only an issue for those of us unfortunate enough to live on the flight path. If expansion goes ahead Heathrow will become the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the whole country. And the government’s plans to expand airports across the UK will make it impossible for us to meet our commitment to reduce emissions and stop runaway climate change.

As legal owners of this plot we will take the opportunity to oppose airport expansion at every stage in the planning process. We’re joined on the deeds by Oscar winning actress Emma Thompson, comedian Alistair McGowan and prospective Tory parliamentary candidate Zac Goldsmith. Along with Greenpeace UK, that’s the maximum number of owners we can put on the deed, but you can sign up to add your name and stand beside us to resist all attempts of a compulsory purchase of the land.

You’ll be joining beneficial owners who’ve already signed-up including local Labour MP John McDonnell, Tory frontbench spokeswoman Justine Greening, Lib Dem MP Susan Kramer, environmentalist George Monbiot and acclaimed climate scientist and Royal Society Research Fellow Dr Simon Lewis.

The runway is by no means inevitable. BAA now faces a long process to get its tarmac laid. So there will be many ways you can get involved in the years it will take to get the runway through the planning process, and we will need your creativity and energy to make sure the runway never gets built. In the coming months and years we will need the help of thousands of people like you to put pressure on your MP, write letters to your local media, join us at events, tell your own community, and much more.

We’ll let you know more about that shortly, we only got the final papers for the land through the end of last week, so the first step is to sign up and let us know you want to be part of the plot over the coming years.

If all our attempts to stop the runway fail, we will stand with the people from the community whose homes will be demolished to build the third runway and block the bulldozers. There will be many ways you can support the blockade even if you don’t fancy joining us on the plot.

We are not going to let this new runway be built to make sure we have a healthy climate and environment for all of us and future generations. Sign up today to join the plot. If we’re serious about tackling climate change, we have to stop airport expansion.

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