Chemical blame game over Syria disguises the real issues

In the aftermath of parliament’s rebuff to prime minister Cameron’s proposed attack on Syria, Barack Obama has been forced to acknowledge the mass opposition to military action.

The legacy of recent debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan and the intervention in Libya continue to haunt large numbers of people, including top military brass.

It is evident that externally-backed regime change in these countries has achieved no benefits, either for their populations or for ordinary citizens in the United States or Britain.

Obama's hesitation about striking Syria is as much to do with popular distaste for war after more than a decade of body bags from Iraq and Afghanistan as it is to do with the timing of G20 summit that takes place in Moscow later this week.

Of course, Cameron and Obama hope to give their tarnished democratic credentials a polish by subordinating themselves to the decisions of elected bodies – parliament and the US Congress.

But meanwhile, the pro-attack faction in parliament – including the vociferous former Lib-Dem leader, Lord Paddy Ashdown - is marshalling forces for a possible second vote. US secretary of state John Kerry is declaring that Obama has the authority to act without Congressional approval.

Much energy is being spent trying to pin down responsibility for the chemical attack in Damascus. Shocking images are published and the US claims to have proof that the regime is responsible.

But the issue of chemical weapons – the “red line that must not be crossed” as Obama put it – is actually a secondary issue to the fundamental question: do the major powers have the “right” to attack Syria?

The debate over who is using the chemical weapons – the Assad regime or those fighting against it – begs the real question: is military intervention

a solution to the misery of the Syrian people? And is it justified in any case?

And does opposition to bombing Assad’s military installations imply support for him?

Absolutely not in response to every question!

The all-important distinction is between the Assad and the Syrian people who have courageously opposed his noxious regime for decades, even while the US, Britain et al were wheeler dealing with Damascus in their power games.

What about the all-important the right to self-determination of the Syrian people themselves? It is as if they don’t exist except as victims whom we must pity.

But a large part of the disposed and poor Syrian people rose up against Assad in the Arab spring of 2011, which undermined autocratic regimes, from Tunisia to Egypt. (How many people know, for example, that in July 2011, the Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook page had over 218,000 followers?)

Of course, their hope that the Assad regime would fall quickly was mistaken. It is backed by Russia (which has a naval base in the country). Moscow has been supplied arms to Syria for decades.

Although Tehran would seem to have little in common with the secular Syrian regime, it too has supported Assad, sending him money to pay for Russian hardware, because his opponents are predominantly Sunni Muslims by contrast with the Shia Muslims in Iran.

Underneath the conflict in Syria is a class division in which the state oppresses its people. These divisions are now masked over by the sectarian religious divide, spurred on and armed by Saudi Arabia, the US and Britain and elements of Al Qaeda on the one side, with Iran and Russia on the other. 

The democratic and social aspirations of Syrians, whatever their religious or non-religious allegiances, like those of Egyptians are totally ignored by most media and commentators.

In the meantime, we say an unconditional “No” to any attacks on Syria. This does not mean giving succour to the Assad regime. As Irfan Ahmad has pointed out, in the Arab states, as elsewhere, the urgent need is to encourage and develop a democratic secular alternative.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

'Fiscal cliff' deal robs US workers

Given that the last-minute deal in Congress was designed to avert the US economy falling over a self-imposed “fiscal cliff”, the best way to picture the outcome is to imagine a cartoon of the two main parties locked together as they cross the precipice.

Now they’re hanging in mid-air, still pummelling each other with nothing beneath them as millions stand fearfully watching and looking over the edge. But there’s something else. The two contestants each have a hand extended, and together they’re wielding a pickaxe at the ground beneath the people’s feet.

It would be comical but for the looming inevitability of the battering facing the 99% of not only Americans, but the majority of people around the world excluded from the rich and powerful trying to rescue the system at whatever cost to the rest of us.

For more than 160 million hard-pressed Americans, the most immediate result of the agreement between the Democrats and Republicans – two sides of the same capitalist coin – automatically removes 2% of their income.

In 2010, president Obama temporarily reduced the social security payroll tax (a bit like the UK’s national insurance) from 6.2% of salary to 4.2%. The new deal doesn’t extend this part of the previous attempt at a recovery from the crash.

For the majority, it’s austerity in everything but name. Those in work will have to pay more to support those without it whilst corporate profits soar. It will get worse within weeks because at the end of February, the debt ceiling has to be resolved one way or another.

“Before you start pouring the champagne to toast the deal, remember, the minute the House vote ends, the countdown to the next crisis begins,” said David Rothkopf of Foreign Policy. The US has already hit its legal borrowing limit of $16.4 trillion but the Treasury, through what it calls “extraordinary measures”, can service the national debt for about two months more.

Obama and the Democrats have deferred spending cuts on programmes like health, social security, defence, excluding them from the deal. The Republicans split and the temporary solution was achieved. But the massive debt won’t evaporate.

The last-minute, dramatically-reduced package of tax measures agreed by the outgoing US Congress not only does nothing to reduce the already unsustainable but ballooning debt. It actually pumps an additional $4 trillion dollars into the balloon over the next ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Obama claims he’s shifting some of the burden to those 300,000 or so earning more than $400,000 dollars, but most of them will just shrug it off. Despite the controversy over the deal, only 0.7%  will be hit by the higher income tax rates on the wealthy, according to the Tax Policy Centre. But 77% of workers would face higher taxes once the ending of a payroll tax holiday and other measures were taken into account.

The unresolved “fiscal cliff” consists of several inter-related components. Some are the result of the US system of budgeting and policymaking. Then there is the fact that US capitalism is debt-driven – at federal, corporate and household levels. Other countries like China buy US debt so that the American government can keep functioning.

But by far the greater problem lies in the global web of corporations controlled by no government but determining policy decisions and actions irrespective of the wishes of the majority.

Anger is growing everywhere against Starbucks, Amazon and the rest, merging with the universal hatred of the speculative profiteering of the bankers that triggered the worldwide Occupy movement. Many, prefer to look away, hoping that the system will crumble under the weight of it own contradictions. But it won’t.

As the New Year agreement shows, those in power will bury their differences in their determination to impose the most brutal of solutions. We, the 99% need a new constitution, a concept of a different set of social relations. And a new revolution.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

A democracy with an extremely small ‘d’

Where in the world can you find a $6 billion election campaign that offers the voter little substantive difference between the major contestants? Yes, you’ve guessed it. We’re talking about tomorrow’s US presidential and congressional elections.

The most expensive elections in American history – thanks to president Obama’s refusal to reform the laws on spending - have actually made little impact. The gap between Obama and Mitt Romney has been narrowing, the more money and approaches to voters are thrown at the campaign.  

The parties are now so close so that there could be a tie in the electoral college. This would mean that the House of Representatives could chose the president while the Senate would chose the vice-president – the first time since 1824.

A number of  shocking attacks highlight the ultra-reactionary nature of the Romney camp. So much so that one US website warns that a Romney victory could “steer the US towards a capitalist dictatorship”.

In Cleveland, Ohio, anti-abortionists – encouraged by Mitt Romney’s Mormon fundamentalism - spray-painted the words Baby Killer on the campaign headquarters of Democratic candidate Wayne Powell. An Obama campaign office in Colorado was vandalised last month with swastikas.

In swing-state Florida, whose election system became notorious during the 2000 “hanging chad” scandal, would-be voters were turned away. The Democratic party filed a law-suit to stop polling stations being closed early as voters stood up to seven hours to cast their votes in Miami.  Other would-be voters were turned away.

One campaign group, No More Stolen Elections, supported by well-known democracy campaigners like Naom Chomsky, Ben Manski, Daniel Ellsberg, Tom Hayden, Green Party presidential candidates, is calling for voter assemblies to be formed to ensure the right to “free and fair” elections.

Reprehensible as the Republican Party’s religious right war-mongering elements may be, Obama is equally gung-ho about an attack on Iran. While Romney’s war dogs are barking, Obama’s “the party of restraint” administration “has engaged in a staggering military build-up in the Persian Gulf and at US and at allied bases around Iran.

US diplomats have been lobbying for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Obama’s pro-Pentagon foreign policy is so aggressive that Romney has had trouble keeping up. As to the illegal drone wars, Obama has superseded Bush in the level of targeted killings.

As billions poured into the election means a non-stop flood of election propaganda and the farcical elements are being mocked. “Under the circumstances, the slogan of ABC News seems either touchingly or mockingly silly: ‘Your Voice, Your Vote.’ Whatever this thing may be, it certainly has ever less to do with your individual voice or your individual vote.  As Big Election becomes a way of life, democracy -- small “d” -- increasingly seems like a term from a lost time.  If this is democracy, it’s on steroids and on the Comedy Channel. It’s our own Democratic Mockpocalypse,” writes Tom Engelhardt.

Whoever wins faces the same economic crisis. And neither have a strategy to deal with what is known as the US fiscal cliff, set for January 2013. G20 policymakers have declared the combination of sharp tax rises and spending cuts the biggest short-term threat to the world economy.

The candidates are desperate to place a distance between themselves and are using every campaigning technique possible. But the decreasing margin between them points to a lack of real difference. It’s evident that Obama has lost the confidence of those he inspired back in 2008. He promised “change you can believe in” and instead his supporters got another pro-business government.

The Republicans and Democrats are both dependent on the corporate, militaristic monster they preside over. Historically, they are two wings of the same American ruling classes. US Green Party candidates Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala rightly talk of the “continuing economic and ecological crises”. But they refuse to identify these with capitalism as a social system so offer no alternative.

What the US election has exposed above all is the deep crisis of legitimacy that pervades every level of the union, at state and federal levels. This is, as Engelhardt says, a democracy with a very small “d” – and getting smaller all the time.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Poverty and inequality: the real State of the Union

As the leaders of the major economies gather for crisis talks in at the G20 in Mexico, they’ll be pondering how they can save capitalism from itself. What they won’t be doing is addressing the vast inequalities that have developed in countries like the United States.

While president Barack Obama and his Republican opponent Mitt Romney trade insults and accusations, neither will refer too often to the real State of the Union. Here, for your enlightenment, are some basic facts about a country usually described as the world’s richest nation:

Poverty: The US poverty rate is estimated at 16.0% of the population. The Department of Agriculture estimates that 14.5% of all households were "food insecure" in 2010.  

Unemployment:  US unemployment is officially 8.2%. The employment-to-population ratio is nearly 5% lower than just five years ago. Anywhere between 10 and 15 million Americans are out of work.  

Discouraged workers. Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe that there are no jobs available for them. The unemployment rate that counts discouraged workers has soared to 15% of the workforce.

Income inequality: The US ranks third among all the advanced economies in the amount of income inequality. The top 1% of Americans control nearly a quarter of all the country's income, the highest share controlled by the top 1% since 1928.

Chief executive officers in 1965 made 24 times more than the average production worker, whereas in 2009 they made 185 times more, falling from a peak of 300 times in 2000.

The median value of family income, when adjusted for inflation and before taxes, fell by 7.7% — from $49,600 in 2007 to $45,800 in 2010.

Racial gaps in education. High-school drop-out rates are least among whites and highest among Hispanics, while college enrolment rates are least among blacks and highest among whites.  

Child Poverty. In the United States, 21% of all children are in poverty, a poverty rate higher than what prevails in virtually all other rich nations.

Health insurance. In 2007, 8.1 million children under 18 years old were without health insurance. Children in poverty and Hispanic children were more likely to be uninsured.

“Bad jobs”. About 10% of full-time workers are in low-wage jobs, 30% don't have health insurance, and 40% don't have pensions.  

Wealth inequality. Ownership of wealth among households in the US has become more concentrated since the 1980s. The top 10% of households controlled 68.2% of the total wealth in 1983 and 73.1% of the total wealth in 2007.

Deregulation of the labour market. The percentage all wage and salary workers who are union members has declined from 24% in 1973 to 12.4% in 2008. At the same time, the real value of the minimum wage, which fell by 25% in the 1980s, has not recovered.

Incarceration. The incarceration rate in the United States has grown dramatically since the 1970s and the US now has one of the highest rates in the world. A full 37% of those who are both young black males and high school dropouts are now in prison or jail, a rate that's more than three times higher than in 1980.

In November, the half of America that votes in presidential elections will be presented with a “choice” between Romney, whose net worth is estimated at $200 million and would undoubtedly widen inequality, and Obama who has appeased the rich and watched inequality grow since he took office in 2008.  

For a system that claims it is based on competition and choice, there is really none at all when it comes to the ballot box.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

 

Obama plays God

When pro-establishment media start to be concerned about the excessive powers of the US president, it’s time for all of us to be on extra alert.

The scale of the drone warfare being escalated - by US General Petraeus and the Central Intelligence Agency on the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan becomes clearer just as a strike killed another 15 people yesterday. Pakistani authorities have protested at this, the eighth and deadliest strike over the last two weeks.

That the US military uses sci-fi method of conducting its wars is not new, of course. We saw “smart bombs” being used in Iraq to wipe out enemy installations, and supposedly avoid “collateral damage”.

But the intensive use of unmanned drones to target supposed al-Qaeda leaders and militants only began in earnest after the election of President Barack Obama.  At that time, the US military and its security machine discovered that the tactics of ground invasion followed by military occupation, which brought down the Taliban in the 1990s, and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, simply did not work in post 9/11 Afghanistan.

And thus, under the Obama presidency, military policy has moved into a third phase seen by observers as  the “new and as yet only partially understood doctrine of secret, unaccountable and illegal warfare.”

An essential element is the use of drones, with more drone-operators now being trained than air-pilots. And why not? It’s the politician’s and general’s dream style way of making war. Your own forces are never put in harm’s way, while you can sit in a war-room and decide who the targets should be.

And there is a secret cabal consisting of Obama and his counterterrorism advisor John Brennan and the CIA who decide who shall live or die. on the borders of Afghanistan. Pakistan and Yemen. A New York Times editorial describes it as “a unilateral campaign of death”. The transformation of Obama – the former liberal law professor– into a man who “approves lethal action without handwringing” now seems complete.

Reporters Jo Becker and Scott Shane have shown how http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?ref=opinion Obama’s aggressive counterterrorism has “baffled liberal supporters and confounded conservative critics alike”.  They provide an insight into how the Obama administration takes on god-like powers over life and death:  

“It is the strangest of bureaucratic rituals: Every week or so, more than 100 members of the government’s sprawling national security apparatus gather, by secure video teleconference, to pore over terrorist suspects’ biographies and recommend to the president who should be the next to die.

“This secret ‘nominations’ process is an invention of the Obama administration, a grim debating society that vets the PowerPoint slides bearing the names, aliases and life stories of suspected members of Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen or its allies in Somalia’s Shabab militia.

“....The nominations go to the White House, where by his own insistence and guided by Mr. Brennan, Mr. Obama must approve any name. He signs off on every strike in Yemen and Somalia and also on the more complex and risky strikes in Pakistan — about a third of the total.

“Aides say Mr. Obama has several reasons for becoming so immersed in lethal counterterrorism operations. A student of writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, he believes that he should take moral responsibility for such actions.”

The use of drones across national borders is rightly seen by many, including the Pakistani government, as not only violating its sovereign rights as a nation, but counter-productive. According to a recent poll, more than two thirds of Pakistanis regard the United States as an enemy. Senior military experts warn that the drone attacks create more extremists than they eliminate.  From “Infinite Justice” to “Enduring Freedom” – such a war can never win.  

But Obama’s efforts to gain the moral high ground in the “war on terrorism” shows that there is less and less to distinguish him from his opponents in the Republican Party.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Obama's warning to Israel falls on deaf ears

President Obama’s latest speeches on Palestine, like his visit to Ireland and to London, are arousing a whole range of emotions and reactions.

Anti-war protesters will gather tomorrow outside Buckingham Palace against the three wars currently being fought by the United States under Obama’s leadership – Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

As the Stop the War Campaign points out, Israel continues to enjoy unflinching support from its US Big Brother – large scale arms sales, aid and political support.

But simply to note this would be to miss out on new realities unleashed by the revolutions of the Arab Spring and its effects on the struggle of the Palestinians for self-determination.

Thousands took part in the May marches throughout the Occupied Territories to mark the Nabka, "catastrophe" in Arabic, that refers to the destruction of Palestinian villages and expulsion of their residents that accompanied Israel's declaration of independence.

Israeli border police troops fired on protesters in an attack which drew international condemnation. Despite 11 fatalities and scores of injuries, Palestinians are continuing to prepare a large-scale march for June 5.

This, combined with the demand for statehood which the Palestinians are taking to the United Nations in September, is the tumultuous background to Obama’s call on Israel to “make the hard choices”.

After meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week and the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Obama refused to back down from his insistence that peace negotiations must focus on Israel’s pre-1967 war borders.

While this is not a new position for US presidents, with Obama proposing “mutually agreed land swaps” in support of a two-state solution, it has nonetheless aroused fury in the Zionist camp.

A US official described Netanyahu’s arrogant, hostile response to Obama as “over the top” while in the United States itself, Zionists and the Republican right have launched a ferocious tirade. Some, suggested one website, consider Obama a “pro-Palestinian Marxist, Islamophile, anti-white bigot, anti-American Marxist and a tyrant in the making”.

While Obama is desperately trying to adapt to the Arab Spring, at the same time fearing its consequence in countries like Syria where he wants Assad to lead changes rather than go, his reference to pre-1967 borders is already looking decidedly shaky.

Palestinian leaders from Hamas and Fatah do not themselves agree on the proposal to return to the 1967 borders. And they currently face a boycott against their monopoly of politics by eight Palestinian groups affiliated to the PLO who have withdrawn from the negotiations to form the unity government recently agreed in Cairo.

The head of Fatah’s press office, Issam al-Halabi has rightly noted: “Politicians are following the people. They don’t have much say, the people are doing everything and this is a turning point in the Palestinian struggle to return, which has recently surprised everyone.” Palestinian negotiators should take advantage of these popular movements to “back up their stance during negotiations”, he believes.

Two things need to be said. One is that Netanyahu’s immediate rejection of Obama’s reference to pre-1967 borders killed off negotiations before they began. Secondly, exploiting the sacrifices of Palestinian youth in Gaza, the Golan Heights and throughout the Occupied Territories as a negotiating ploy is quite treacherous and cynical.

When Obama told the AIPAC that “we cannot afford to wait another decade, or another two decades, or another three decades to achieve peace” because the world “is moving too fast”, he was actually keenly aware of the truth.

He was, in effect, warning the Israeli ruling class that its days – similar to the position that the apartheid regime in South Africa found itself in - are numbered. The renewed Palestinian uprisings, like the incredibly courageous movements in Syria and Yemen, are part of a global movement against the status quo. It is mobilising countless youth from Tunis to Tahrir and now in the Spanish May 15 occupation movement. It is impossible to imagine this process succeeding without an independent Palestinian state.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Assad in the firing line on the road to Damascus

The turmoil that has been sweeping Syria since January, when demonstrators caught the fever of the Arab spring revolutionary movement, is reaching a climax.

On Friday, tens of thousands protested against President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime in Aleppo, Suweida, Deraa and near Damascus on Syrian Independence Day. At least 22 are said to have been killed when security forces opened fire in Deraa.

The anti-government movement has deepened the crisis of the 40-year-old Assad dynasty. It is disrupting the mosaic of national, religious, ethnic, and oil politics together with big power interests. In response to the power of Friday’s Day of Rage, al-Assad promised to lift Syria’s emergency laws which have been in force since 1962.

To add to complexities, yesterday saw the publication of US embassy cables, released by WikiLeaks .They reveal that the US State Department has been promoting various “civil society strengthening initiatives”, such as the Movement for Justice and Development to the tune of $12m between 2005-2010.

The US has had an on-off relationship with Damascus over the decades, partly because of its anti-Zionist stance and partly because it is viewed as a cat’s paw for Iranian interests in the area. At the same time, the Bush administration used Syria to torture people as part of its “extraordinary rendition” programme. The US re-opened relations with Syria in 2010, appointing a ambassador to Damascus for the first time for five years.

In a desperate measure to satisfy protesters, al-Assad promised to lift the emergency laws that have ban gatherings of more than five people by Monday 25 April. Assad took over after his father Hafez al-Assad, who died in 2000, continuing the “hereditary dictatorship” that has kept Syria under the grip of state security forces. Amongst other authoritarian measures, the regime banned Facebook in attempts to stop anti-government blogging. In desperate moves to cling on to power he has been firing ministers and making promises and concessions (at least on paper) over the last couple of months.

But even while pledging to lift the state of emergency, al-Assad threatened: “We will not tolerate any attempts at sabotage.” So far over 200 people have been killed during the unrest, including four in the last 24 hours. Many were murdered by pro-regime thugs wielding revolvers, stun guns and batons.

Al-Assad and his brutal secret police will no doubt seek to exploit the WikiLeaks revelations to discredit those seeking reforms and/or to topple his regime. Like his fellow tyrants in the region, Assad seeks to rally support against his opponents by painting them as agents of foreign oppressors.

But rather than revealing the power of US imperialism, WikiLeaks cables actually show the state of disarray within Washington’s ruling circles, the divisions between the presidency and covert operations machinators. The US wants to maintain its cosy relationship with the feudal Saudi monarchy and keep the oil flowing, but at the same time manipulate the rulers of less powerful states like Syria, which they see as unreliable and too close to Iran.

It is not an unwillingness to sacrifice and even risk death that holds back the the hundreds of thousands who have espoused the cause of the Syrian revolution. They include, amongst others, the Youth of 4-5 February movement, the Syrian Days of Rage and the Syrian Revolution Facebook which has nearly 120,000 followers.

US support for the anti-regime movements in Syria as elsewhere in the Middle east and north Africa has produced a sorcerer’s apprentice. No one is truly in control. In Egypt, the army has arrested former president Mubarak in a desperate bid to retain control of the revolution. In Libya, the West’s intervention has helped create a stalemate and tainted the opposition to Gaddafi. The challenge for revolutionary forces is to create a secular Pan-Arab leadership that can unite the masses and build for the next stage of the Arab Revolution, whose aim has to be social revolution.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

“A system-wide” problem indeed

In the end, of course, it was a question of saving time and, above all, money. Even the official report into the BP gulf oil disaster has been compelled to come to this conclusion.

On April 20, 2010, the disaster killed 11 workers, seriously injured many others, and spewed over four million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for nearly three months, creating the largest oil spill ever in American waters.

President Obama set up a commission to investigate the causes. The first part of its report published today acknowledges: “Whether purposeful or not, many of the decisions that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean made that increased the risk of the Macondo blowout clearly saved those companies significant time (and money).”

Although this conclusion is somewhat buried amidst lots of talk about “management failure” in terms of bad communications and so on – it is inescapably the overriding cause of the disaster.

The panel found that mistakes and "failures to appreciate risk" compromised safeguards "until the blow-out was inevitable and, at the very end, uncontrollable". BP's "fundamental mistake", the panel wrote, was failing to exercise proper caution over the job of sealing the well with cement.

"Based on evidence currently available, there is nothing to suggest that BP's engineering team conducted a formal, disciplined analysis of the combined impact of these risk factors on the prospects for a successful cement job," the report reads.

The report lists a host of engineering mistakes and management failures. These include flawed procedures for securing the well and an ineffective response to the blowout once it began.

What the report also reveals is a cosy relationship between government regulators and the oil industry. The agency responsible was understaffed and didn't have the inspectors and technical analysts “who were up to the task fully."

Commission co-chair William K. Reilly said the inquiry had asked whether it was a case of a single company, BP, that “blundered with fatal consequences”, or a more “pervasive problem of a complacent industry”, adding: “I reluctantly conclude we have a system-wide problem.”

Bob Graham, former Florida governor and a co-chairman of the commission, said the findings showed the blow-out was in fact avoidable. "This disaster likely would not have happened had the companies involved been guided by an unrelenting commitment to safety first," he said.

But even he must know that the oil corporations – like any other capitalist business – are guided first and foremost by a commitment to shareholders, to the bottom line, to returns on capital invested. To profit.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Petraeus deepens Obama's problems

Only a month after taking charge of US troops in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, commander of US and NATO forces, has openly challenged President Obama. Coming amidst increasing political turmoil, it is a dangerous moment for his presidency.

In an NBC television interview, Petraeus said that Obama’s 2011 target date for withdrawal was dependent on conditions permitting. The general’s open defiance comes as the US occupation is suffering its the highest level of casualties since it invaded Afghanistan in 2001.

But it is not only the Afghan people and the US troops killed on the battlefield or on the roads of Afghanistan who are bearing the brunt of the war. When combat troops return home, increasing numbers cannot cope with the psychological after-effects of seeing the carnage inflicted not only by the Taliban but by their own side.

In descriptions of mental trauma reminiscent of the long-term effects on US veterans from the Vietnam war, Time reporter Mark Thompson says that the US army faces a “third front” – trying to rescue its own soldiers from insanity. Soldiers are seeking mental health support more than 100,000 times a month.

One in every 10 soldiers who has completed a single combat deployment has a mental ailment, Thompson has found. The rate rises each time a soldier is redeployed. “More than 500,000 troops have returned home to the US in the last decade with a mental illness,” Thompson estimates.

The result is that suicide rates in the army have been rising. Despite a $7 million expenditure on hi-tech facilities like Fort Campbell, near Nashville, Kentucky, home to the 101st Airborne Division, suicides there have continued to rise.

Not only do they suffer mental breakdowns, but soldiers - and even more significantly – their carers, have turned their weapons on themselves and their superiors. Last November, after a killing spree at the Fort Hood military facility in Texas, Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan was accused of killing 13 people. Hasan, who received medals for service in the Gulf war, had specialist training in the treating traumatic stress at the US armed forces University of the Health Sciences.

But the physical and psychological fall-out amongst his troops, will not deter Petraeus who shows typical disdain for the poor bloody infantry who do the dirty work, and pay the price, while the generals screw up on a consistent basis. Speaking in his Kabul headquarters, he said that he would resist any large-scale or rapid withdrawal of American forces.

Petraeus let the cat out of the bag about the real reason for the continuing US-UK occupation of Afghanistan. He said the country had the potential to become a "new Silk Road", a crossroads for trade, especially in minerals: "Afghanistan is blessed with the presence of what are... trillions of dollars' worth of minerals”.

Behind Petraeus stands the military-industrial complex – the US and global corporations anxious to exploit the lithium and oil resources. The oil corporations’ appetites will have been whetted by an announcement by the Karzai regime that a survey has found a rich new oil field in the north of the country.

The military top brass are deepening the crisis for Obama, whose approval ratings continue to slide. In advance of the November mid-term elections, around half the country disapproves strongly of the government.

Obama appointed Petraeus after sacking Commander General Stanley McChrystal in June. This was after McChrystal had openly attacked the administration in an interview published by Rolling Stone magazine. To have one general defy your government may be regarded as a misfortune; but to have two in quick succession ready to counter the commander-in-chief in public looks like carelessness.

To have all this happen while the US economy continues to tank and a series of rabid right-wingers in and around the notorious Tea Party challenge the authority of the state itself, might be considered to be a dangerous cocktail.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

The American dream is a nightmare of foreclosures

Las Vegas – known best for its gambling haunts – now has a new reputation. It’s America’s No.1 city for foreclosures, with more people losing their homes here than elsewhere in the country.

Artist Emily Kennerk has created a 22-hour video installation which shows an image of every home foreclosed in 2009. (Foreclosure is the legal process whereby a bank or lender obtains a court order that terminates the borrower’s right of redemption. It is harsher than repossession).

Describing her installation, Kennerk says as you walk around the town you can’t help but see “this ghost town is forming around you. It’s broader than Las Vegas. This is the first generation that’s going to have to deal with the death of the American dream”.

More than four million US homes have been repossessed in the past three years. A website currently lists 2,304,257 foreclosed properties in the US. In the state of Nevada where unemployment stands at 14%, more than six out of ten of all home sales are currently from foreclosures.

At the start of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, back in September 2008, the US Treasury took the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac into government “conservatorship”. These two mortgage corporations were set up under Roosevelt’s New Deal during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Along with Ginnie Mae (the Government National Mortgage Association) they currently guarantee $5 trillion in US mortgages and 96.5% of all newly originated mortgages in the US.

So far the government has injected $145 billion into them to cover their losses. The mortgage market now is almost a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States government, according to former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volker. "Almost all the mortgages made now are insured by the government, bought by the government, and the guys at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the market . . . It’s clear Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac need to go. "

But the US is not only affected by a housing crisis. The malaise goes far, far deeper. Three trends have come together. Economists estimate that the annual incomes of the bottom 90% of Americans have risen only 10 per cent in real terms over the past 37 years while the incomes of the top 1 per cent have tripled.

Thus, a “slow economic strangulation”, which began well before the Great Stagnation, now means that income mobility is declining just as inequality rises sharply. Even families with a gross joint income of $70,000 per year, are only “a pay check or two from the streets” as one Minneapolis worker puts it. Medical expenses are a nightmare. Even families on twice the US median joint income have to borrow heavily to have essential, life-saving operations.

Arthur Miller’s 1949 play, Death of a Salesman, dramatised the anxieties arising from US Great Depression of the 1930s and the reliance on credit to provide necessities. During the Cold War years, such plays were seen as an attack on great American dream. But in today’s Great Stagnation, following the years of easy debt-fuelled consumer credit, which analysts call the “Great Moderation”, it’s certainly not playwrights who are pricking the dream-bubble.

The inability of the capitalist system, not only to ensure the fundamental necessities of life, but the very notion of a positive future is self-evident. Cities and states are staring at bankruptcy while trillions of government dollars have failed to revive the economy. As American comedian George Carlin quipped: “It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe in it.”

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Oil spill goes global

Estimates of the quantity of oil gushing into waters of the Gulf of Mexico continue to increase. BP’S own guess was originally as low as 1,000-5,000. Then the original 5,000 barrels a day grew to 60,000.

Now, more than two weeks into the capping operation, around 45,000 barrels are still poisoning the seas, destroying wildlife and wrecking livelihoods – and there is no prospect of stopping the flow. It is on track to become the worst oil spill since the first Gulf War in 1991, which spilt around six million barrels.

This worsening catastrophe does not just symbolise the intertwined ecological, economic, social and political consequences of capitalist production and distribution. It is at the centre of the universal crisis that is now changing the way of life of every person on the planet. The explosion was by no means an unforeseeable accident. The drive for growth to sustain profits produced a global economy lubricated by increasing amounts of credit and debt and fuelled by oil. As the oil became harder to extract, costs escalated, profits were hit and corners cut.

During the Congressional hearing of the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, in the US House of Representatives yesterday, Chair Ed Markey dismantled attempts by the other oil companies to isolate BP. He and other House Democrats ripped into the chiefs of oil companies for filing bogus oil-safety reports before drilling new deep-sea wells, saying they are no better prepared for an offshore disaster than BP. Congressional investigators found that all five of the nation’s major oil firms filed virtually the same safety report prior to drilling new wells - right down to citing a long-dead expert who could be called in the event of an emergency.

The economic consequences are resounding around the world. The highly lucrative local fishing industry has been closed down. Tourism is melting away. BP’s market value has declined by more than 40% since the Horizon drilling rig blew up. The value of pension funds dependent on BP’s profits is dropping like a stone. The mess on Florida’s beaches is heating up the campaign to seize BP’s assets and there are indications that the global corporation is exploring ways to protect its US operation through bankruptcy proceedings.

President Obama’s speech last night, broadcast from the Oval Office, was largely about the need to wean the US off of its addiction to oil. His attempt to divert attention from his inability to do anything effective about the spill not only failed to convince anyone but, according to many commentators, actually worsened the political crisis. As the Financial Times put it ‘And there was something in it to frustrate or antagonise virtually every stakeholder who was listening.’

In his response to BP’s testimony, Ed Markey eloquently expressed the contradiction at the heart of the crisis: “BP is more concerned about minimising its ‘liability’ for the costs of the clean-up than for the ‘livability of the Gulf’ ”.

But the US Congress is no more able to act to stop the destructive actions of global corporations like BP than it is to regulate the financial institutions that arrogantly straddle the world.

The moment has arrived for a new kind of politics and a new kind of democracy based upon collective stewardship of the planet we depend upon. Now is the time for a qualitative change in our relationship with nature. Let’s begin the job of reconstructing democracy from the bottom up through the building of an international network of People’s Assemblies.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor

Being anti-capitalist is only a start

As the leaders of the world’s richest countries start gathering in London for Thursday’s G20 summit, a picture can convey more than words about what confront Obama, Brown et al. The latest cover of Time magazine just about sums up the desperate nature of the global economic crisis. It depicts a small boat with six people desperately rowing to prevent it falling off the edge of a massive waterfall. The headline is: “All together now (please?)”

Whatever efforts are made at the G20, it’s apparent that even if the participants agree on stricter regulation of the global financial system, the proverbial cat is out of the bag. In fact, those taking part have already said as much. The German chancellor Angela Merkel spoiled the party on Saturday when she said that no deal would reached and that the summit “will naturally not solve the economic crisis either”.

Gordon Brown hopes that “this crisis can be dealt with by us acting internationally” and by the assertion of “sounder principles”. Only in his dreams. The notion that those overseeing the global economy can and will redress “global imbalances” is clearly cloud-cuckoo land. In reality, the world economy is on a knife-edge. Financier George Soros, the sage and self-appointed Cassandra of financial capital has warned that if the G20 does not insulate developing countries “against a calamity that is not of their making” the world will slide into slump. Soros does not appear over-confident about the outcome.

The most significant question is not “imbalances” between the richer and the developing countries, but the nature of capitalist production and ownership itself. The relentless drive for profit through unsustainable growth is at the root of the current crisis. Obviously, the G20 capitalist club is not in a position to address this issue! As A World to Win said in the flyer we distributed at Saturday’s “Put People First” march in London:

“Those who created the crisis are part of the problem, not the solution. The global crisis is a great opportunity to make a dramatic change and create for the first time a society where the majority actually come first over the narrow interests of profit. Ordinary people should plan for a future based on co-operation not competition, co-ownership and not private ownership, and for meeting social need not the demands of bankers and shareholders.”

The mass support for the protest march, organised by the Trades Union Congress and supported by a host of other organisations, which was joined by workers from across Europe, was significant despite the futile appeals to the G20 leaders put forward by march organisers. The response – estimated at around 35,000 even by the police which means it was far higher – shows that people are willing to take to the streets to defend their living standards

In Germany tens of thousands marched in Frankfurt and Berlin. It was, as comedian Mark Thomas also noted, the first time that people have had a chance to come out on the streets in a big way. Thomas called for it to be “the start of a grassroots movement”.

The key issue is where that movement should go? This is the question that must be raised at the camps and actions organised by ecological and direct action groups in the City and at alternative summits organised by students this week. Brown is right about one thing – the crisis is forcing change. That change has to be on terms that benefit society and the planet as a whole, however. Our Charter for Democratic Rights suggests how we can achieve the revolutionary transformation required. Sign it, spread the word, and join A World to Win in its aim of going beyond anti-capitalist propaganda to creating a practical alternative.

Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary

The railroading begins

With Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama facing a crucial day in their campaign to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, organised labour is having its day in the limelight. With no viable or independent alternative on the horizon, US union leaders still hitch their wagon to the Democratic Party in the hope that they will have some influence when and if their nominee occupies the White House.

In Ohio, one of the industrial heartlands of the country now hit by the impact of globalisation, just 14% of workers are organised in trade unions. The division is between the older, skilled and white collar unions like the American Federation of Teachers and the machinists’ union who support Clinton on the one side, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) which draws considerable support from African Americans on the other.

Unions like the SEIU, the powerful Teamsters Union, Unite Here (hotel workers) and the United Food and Commercial Workers broke away from the AFL-CIO [TUC] in 2005 to form the Change to Win coalition. With a few exceptions most of the Change to Win unions support Obama, with some key industrial unions like the United Steelworkers and the United Auto Workers remaining neutral. Most of the Change to Win unions see Obama’s ability to rise from obscurity and mobilise large numbers as an inspiration to breathe life into union recruitment, which, as in the UK, has been in general decline.

Surprisingly large numbers of Americans have become involved in political debate through the Clinton-Obama battle. Obama’s rhetoric, however empty most of the time, has given some expression to the underdog in American politics. Obama has cleverly crafted his politics to tap in to the disenchantment with the politics of the old establishment. In many states, Obama’s campaign seems to have come from nowhere to challenge Clinton’s veterans. Young first-timers as well as older volunteers are staffing offices in obscure towns, using laptops and the Internet to co-ordinate the campaign and mobilise support.

But we’d better not get carried away by the image-makers. Despite his claim to being a new broom that will sweep clean, there is no way Obama will truly challenge the real power behind the presidency in the United States. He has no intention of overturning the military-industrial complex behind Bush and his global wars.

Yet we can already feel the railroading into supporting the Democrats coming on. It’s sobering to observe how an anti-corporate campaigner like author Naomi Klein takes it for granted that Guardian readers will back Obama, making bleating pleas that he should use his campaign to stand up against “islamophobia” and take seriously his mission to “repair the world”.

The one candidate who has consistently challenged the corporations, Ralph Nader, is already under fire from liberals like Joshua Holland of the AlterNet Independent Media Institute. After demonstrating that – counter to Democratic Party propaganda - Nader was not responsible for handing over victory to Bush in Florida or elsewhere in 2000, and that he has the right to run, Holland then goes on to say that he won’t be voting for him, on the grounds that as an “independent liberal”, he needs to “beat down the reactionary right”. Another supposedly independent thinker, Timothy Noah of Slate takes a similar stance, saying that he disagrees with Nader that the Democrats and Republicans are too similar.

To say that we know the Democrats are grim but the Republicans are even grimmer is a truly hopeless political perspective. It seeks to force voters to remain within the two-party cycle, where Tweedledum and Tweedledee take turns in running the country on behalf of corporate power. After all, it was the Clinton presidency that opened the door for Bush and it is the Democrats who in Congress, despite their majority in both houses, sit on their hands and allow Bush free rein. As Nader once said, if the Democrats are indeed the lesser of two evils, they are still evil!

Corinna Lotz
Secretary, A World to Win

Democrats tried and trusted

Lest anyone gets too excited about the prospect of the first woman or the first black person entering the White House as president, it is well to remember what the Democratic Party is all about. Probably the oldest capitalist party in the world, tracing its roots back to the late 18th century, the Democrats represent absolutely no threat to the corporate and financial power centres that dominate politics in the United States.

The last time the Democrats were in power under Bill Clinton, they managed to grind the aspirations of their supporters down so far that George W. Bush was able to steal a tainted victory in 2000 and the rest, as they say, is history. Should either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama win in November, don’t hold your breath. Obama is vacuousness itself while Clinton is all things to all people.

The Democratic Party is one of America’s two parties of big business, taking turns with the Republicans to command the state. This is best illustrated by its record when last in office and voting records in Congress since Bush has been in power. During the Clintons’ presidency (she played a crucial policy-making role), the administration:

- abandoned the promise of universal health care in the face of hostility from the big insurance companies
- signed the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico which saw a fall in wages of US workers and the export of jobs to non-union, cheap-labour border areas
- created the World Trade Organisation in 1994 as the policeman of the corporate-driven globalisation project
- bombed Serbia in 1999 and tightened the screws on Iraq through sanctions, creating the precedent for Bush’s subsequent invasion of Iraq
- presided over the jailing of more black people than under the previous Reagan administration
- allowed inequality in America to grow to record levels.

Out of office, the Democrats have performed no better. The vast majority in Congress backed the authoritarian measures such as the Patriot Act introduced by Bush following the September 11 attacks. They authorised the invasion of Afghanistan, inflicting more misery on that country and have backed the so-called “war on terror” which has demonised Muslims all over the world.

All but a handful – of which Obama is one in contrast to his opponent – endorsed the invasion of Iraq. Even after winning majorities in both houses of Congress in 2006, the Democrats have declined to force Bush’s hand in Iraq by calling for an end to the occupation. This is consistent with the party that brought the world the horrific war in Vietnam, the attempted overthrow of Castro in Cuba and other military adventures.

There is clearly a thirst for change in America, which is reflected in the primary campaigns in which record numbers have taken part. Support for Obama in the primaries is strongest amongst the most impoverished sections in society as well as new generations of voters. Obama has galvanised the grass roots of the party and raised his funds mainly from individuals while Clinton represents the establishment and is dependent on big-money funders. Ultimately, however, Obama’s role is to send the desire for change down safe channels while Clinton wants to contain change altogether. With the economic recession beginning to bite, if either wins the election, they will face an increasingly angry American electorate that demands radical change in deeds rather than words. And that will be way beyond what the Democratic Party can offer.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor