2008-06-15

Voodoo Economics and the Crisis in Thinking

A Brand New Sleigh Ride

Polar extremes should exist between the two candidates in the US presidential race, but they don’t. So, a longed for curtailing of the failed policies that dominated the last seven-and-a-half years must suffice. The American public wants some distance between it and the GOP’s neo-conservative movement.

What world do those people dwell in who want eight more years of the same loud mouth, lackluster kno-nothings. If you make less than millions or your stock is down, the reasons for backing the GOP probably have dwindled considerably. That goes a thousand times over for working class people. Unless the assumption of white supremacy really clouds some folks’ heads that bad.

This election only needs to be about partisanship, when even old line conservatives cannot support the GOP anymore. They must cross over because of the failed policies of the last eight years and their desire to have history remember them kindly.

That's right. Few real issues need to be addressed when everything separating the Dems from the GOP has been burnt in the electorate’s mind. Americans need something fresh, like an Easter outfit. Its that simple. Not saying the Dems are the salvation or Obama is so great. Nope! It's just that the GOP has steered full speed into a clustermuck.

After all, the Dems lag behind the GOP in so many ways, they have to catch up for eight years of tailing the Republicans. The Democrats didnt fight hard enuf to keep those worms out of govt. Even now, the Dems continue to collaborate with the GOP on the Telecom Bill, letting the communications companies off the hook for consenting to illegal government wiretaps.

The Dems have too much fraternizing across the aisles to ever really be effective. Only two stellar black women, Cynthia McKinney and Barbara Lee, stand out from that count. Otherwise, the Democratic Party never separated itself from the neo-con Voodoo economists.

Of economics and budgets, how interesting the nations roads, bridges, water and sanitary systems have fallen into disrepair. The levee system along the Mississippi, particularly in Louisiana as evidenced following Hurricane Katrina, has suffered badly. A levee in Cedar Rapids, Iowa recently failed because of heavy storm waters. The decay of these systems poses a direct -- if undetected or ignored -- threat to the health and safety of Americans in many places.

Thru such contradictions the basic idiocy of capitalism confronts the puppet-mouth hacks themselves. Neo-con stooges sling around slogans like family values by muttering utter nonsense, encapsulated in presidential statements like, “Catsup is a vegetable.” The very things needed to help families they have undermined.

Yet Americans allow these same crumbs to browbeat them into submission over what is American, patriotic and good.

Now, during the gas crisis, they want to open drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. But this is capitalism. CAPITALISM. You don’t own an oil rig. So you don’t get to make decisions when and where oil rigs go to work. Supply-side economics for all you half-baked Voodoo economists out there. Go back to your sixth grade civics books and learn what the Great Communicator told you. America is a capitalist country and capitalism doesn’t operate on the public dole.

Meanwhile the Fed gives massive liquidity injections to failing banks thru overnight grants because of the subprime mortgage scandal. Having made countless loans based on speculative interest rates (ARMs), many people lost their homes due to foreclosure. Businesses with balloon payments also folded. Nobody bailed out either of these two groups. Yet the banks represent the highest level of business organization in America under the capitalist system. Giving them emergency grants during this period strongly suggests that capitalism is a failure.

Using public funds to assist private business contradicts Maynard Keynes model of the welfare state. Keynes’ theories led FDR to carve out the programs of the New Deal. The Marshall Plan extended Keynes macroeconomic government policy model, whereby the US rebuilt its European allies following WW2. One way their debt was settled, England and France relinquished their colonies so the US could move transnational companies into fresh territory. Such a relationship sealed America's economic domination for fifty years.

Posing a foil, the Chicago School elucidated on the short life and limited the usages of capital. Milton Friedman taught that government exists to liberate public assets for bourgeois enrichment. His theories on how to rapaciously exploit government power and wealth to line capitalist pockets defines the neo-conservative movement. Out of this school comes the Reaganesque “voodoo economics” that Bush 43s Administration has taken to a whole new low.

Yet public monies and assets are produced by millions of hard working people who should be entitled to them, rather than denied as under the GOP model. Until people understand the dynamics of public policy and what goes on beyond the rhetoric, we will be stuck with a “Crisis in Thinking” as I call it, which makes choices between political parties a Pavlovian nightmare. That time looms ahead when US economic domination bites the dust and Americans get a real wake up call from their leaders.

2008-06-07

Bet You Didn’t Kno How Much Was Going On

News Bits from the World Palenques


Compiled from Granma
MEDELLIN, June 3.—Venezuela’s foreign minister demanded the US arrest the fugitive Luis Posada Carriles, wanted in the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976, slaughtering all 73 on board. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Madura made the demand during the Plenary Session of the Organization of American States in Medellin, Colombia on June 3. Maduro asked to speak after Washington’s ambassador to the OAS spoke, alleging that the United States condemns terrorism.
“That is why we are once again requesting, formally, right here, the capture of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, who is a fugitive from justice wanted for terrorist attacks,” Maduro said.
This past May 8 marked one year since the definitive liberation of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles in the United States.
Addendum. At that time, the ruling of Judge Kathleen Cardone threw out the charges brought against Posada by the U.S. government. The terrorist had been accused solely of committing fraud and lying to the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement authorities in order to obtain naturalization in the US. The judge said at the time, “The realm of this case is not, as some have suggested, terrorism,” she wrote. “It is immigration fraud. Terrorism, and the determination as to whether or not to classify an individual as a terrorist, lies within the sound discretion of the executive branch.”
The U.S. government has not charged Posada for his acts of terrorism even though it has all the evidence based on its longstanding relationship with him, along with what Cuba has provided since 1998.
Paradoxically, it was Judge Cardone herself who, in one of her initial rulings, highlighted the fact that he is a dangerous terrorist and even listed part of the string of crimes committed by this sinister individual.
Judge Cardone noted Posada’s participation in some of the most repugnant actions of the 20th century. The long list includes the Iran-Contra scandal, the bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455, the detonation of bombs in Havana tourist sites in 1997 and plans to assassinate President Fidel Castro in Panama, in 2000.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounces the conspiratorial inaction by the United States government and the protection given to Luis Posada Carriles by the administration of George W. Bush.

ROME, June 5.—The UN Summit on Food Security: The Effects of Climate Change and Bioenergy concluded at midnight on Thursday with the commitment of heads of state and government, ministers and other representatives to assume the urgent task of guaranteeing foodstuffs and eradicating hunger as ongoing national policy. In spite of the observation by a number of countries of the South that the document lacks substantial aspects in terms of placing responsibility on the Western powers for the current serious situation, there was a consensus of support for the FAO in its undertaking to achieve world food security.

from Al Jazeera
BAGHDAD, June 7.—Thousands of Iraqis have taken to the streets in the Sadr City district of Baghdad, denouncing a proposed deal that would keep US troops in Iraq beyond 2008. Protesters set fire to a US flag and to an effigy of George Bush, the US president, following weekly prayers on Friday. This story was reported in June 7 in Al Jazeera which also has an excellent article on Obama.

2008-06-04

AIDS, Obama and Zimbabwe

Dialectical and Historical Materialism forms the philosophical construct whereby Internationalists understand the World. It forms the basis for revolutionary action and activity. It shaped Lenin’s political approach to organizing, which revolutionized socialist movements. Mao Zedong contributed a great deal of theory because of it. Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral and Walter Rodney became giants in the African liberation struggle because they took hold of this Marxian methodology.

Dialectics studies contradictions. Dialectics is the study of motion and activity. Dialectics observes the harmony of opposites. Dialectics is the study of change. It is all these things and more. When we learn Dialectics, it must be understood and applied beyond the classroom.

To take an example, it is no coincidence that the AIDS epidemic began towards the end of the colonial period in Africa. The black community knows and recognizes this. Perhaps not so amazing, no scientist has as yet traced its etiology. Science knows, e.g., that gonorrhea originated in Greece about one thousand BC, from men having intercourse with sheep. Scientists kno this from breaking down the genetic profile of the gonorrhea cell. If science can identify and break down a mere molecule like DNA, it can identify any virus which contains DNA.

But society has not been informed about the origin of the HIV strain that leads to AIDS. Almost anyone may correctly surmise that HIV did not enter Africa until colonialism neared its end, which drives the assumption that HIV was invented in a laboratory. HIV/AIDS was first noticed in Haiti and in the San Francisco gay community. Were it not for the infection rate within the gay community, AIDS may still go untreated today. Africa people’s dialectical approach has slowed the spread of HIV in Africa, despite limited access to pharmaceuticals. We continue to do battle with AIDS despite Imperialism.

But everything studying change and motion and contradiction is not dialectics.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s series of speeches which separated him from Barack Obama constituted part of our historical struggle against Imperialism. Wright obviously values his relationship to the African masses more than that to a potential US president. Which is every noble. Just taking that struggle on its face, a very shallow assumption, indeed, the African community may very well prefer Wright to Obama in every sense, and for reasons beyond the scope of this essay. Obama’s genuflect response to white critics’ finger-pointing is one.

On the question of Africa, we can surmise that whatever Obama hopes today to accomplish will tomorrow be derailed by his instantaneous kowtowing to racism. Our enemies also study change, motion, harmony and contradictions. However, this for propelling society backwards, which explains why we consider them reactionaries. And Obama aspires to the reactionary crown, the US presidency. What little good may be accomplished by any man who is not a revolutionary, can quickly be wiped out in the next administration.

Zimbabwe poses a question in context. In the past, Africans have held ZANU-PF and Robert Mugabe is high esteem. Zimbabwe played the major role in settling the security question for Southern Africa. While Angola -- leading a combined force made of Cubans, and fighting cadres from South Africa and Namibia -- may be said to have delivered Imperialist apartheid's death blow in Cuito Cuanavales, Zimbabwe had been dug in for the long-term. The shimmering prestige of the Harare regime glowed all over the African world.

Today that prestige is crushed. The Imperialists have wanted to open Zimbabwe’s veins since the negotiated settlement. Now the attacks on Zimbabwe have begun to rain in from what poses as the black Left. Forming an ideological thunderhead over our comrades there, they have let loose with a torrent of criticism that does not characterize the revolutionary tradition. It is reminiscent of the critics of the Baathists in the months following the US invasion of Iraq. In fact, some critics of ZANU have gone so far as to put Mugabe in the leaky same boat as Saddam Hussein.

As well he may be, but for different reasons. Horace Campbell excoriated Saddam in a 2003 Black Commentator article condemning Mugabe. Campbell did so without elaborating on the role Saddam had played for Imperialism, and how Imperialism betrayed him. Discussing Saddam’s scourge on the Kurds, not his eight-year war against Iran, Panama’s Noriega may have been my example. But they’re both good examples for reasons Campbell missed. They both got invaded by America, justified by criticisms made by ideological forces supposedly loyal to the masses, like Campbell, and professor Mike Matambanadzo.

That is empiricism and revision, not dialectics.

2008-06-03

The War of Words Over Zimbabwe Continues

Little Haiti Opposes ALD Revisionists



African Liberation Day has historically played a major role in keeping the revolutionary tradition alive in the US black community. This day has been used to introduce our community to liberation movements around the world. Held to counter xenophobia and racism, as well as to expose reactionaries, ALD has always served as an important event for building Black unity.

Dramatically dissing a worldwide ALD tradition, Pittsburgh’s Black Voices for Peace held a discussion on Zimbabwe which amounted to a categorical attack on ZANU-PF and Robert Mugabe. The limited mass appeal of this event attracted less than twenty onlookers.

The presenter, Mike Matambanadzo, substantiated not one single allegation. His ridiculous assertions were at times unbelievable even to Black Voices, who upheld his propaganda nonetheless. A professor and a Zimbabwean exile, he framed his presentation on a wholesale repudiation of Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe African National Union/Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).

Wearing a Che Guevara tee, the professor stated early on that Morgan Tsvangarai’s MDC had won recent elections outright, an unsupportable position. The MDC itself recognizes that a runoff is necessary, yet Matambanadzo still insisted that they had won over fifty percent. He said that ZANU has bankrupted the country. The professor denied that ZANU contributed to the liberation struggle and discounted ZANU-PF’s long-time popularity not only in Zimbabwe but thru out the region and the rest of Africa.

Needing points from the outset, Black Voices and Matambanadzo cited Fidel Castro and Amilcar Cabral to contextualize their neo-colonialist revision of ALD.

Matambanadzo stated that an impoverished Zimbabwe had no computer at its embassy, therefore preventing him from returning home. As a well-paid professor, he may contribute one himself and thereby expedite the process for obtaining his passport. Yeah, right.

He stated that ZANU invaded DR Congo to loot the country of precious resources. When challenged on this point, he could not verify nor explain why ZANU had, at this juncture, turned its back on Black liberation and abandon the troubled Kabila government.

Black Voices passed out a confusing, wild statement by Horace Campbell, posted 31 July 03 in The Black Commentator, which subheads “Charles Taylor and Jonas Savimbi as freedom fighters”. Those words constitute revision in any context whatsoever. Obviously, Campbell at some time or another lacked clarity about Taylor and Savimbi, but Black Internationalists knew. CORE’s Roy Innis supported Savimbi because both lived on the neo-con payroll.

Where did Horace Campbell develop this gaslight theory that the liberation movement ever embraced those criminals? In making that claim, Campbell avoids declaring who took in and accepted Taylor or Savimbi. Why the cover up, when the masses should be informed. The US black liberation movement basically consists of groups and splinters which have rejected Savimbi and Taylor. Unlikely, but perhaps somewhere a Black Student Organization invited them to speak. The NAACP had clarity on those sub-imperialists.

Slinging garbage at Saddam Hussein, Campbell comes across like Curveball in the weeks up to and preceding the US invasion of Iraq. The primary contradiction posed by Iraq, the only industrialized Arab country, was its defiance; Iraqi Arab women had greater freedom under the Ba’athists than under US occupation, a point missed by Campbell.

Did Campbell ever read Galeano, Walter Rodney, Geo GM James, Fanon, Cabral, Biko, George Jackson, Lenin and Mao instead of neo-liberals and Trots. As a professor, he needs open his mind to Akua Njeri, Omali Yeshitela, Bob Brown, Abdul Alkalimat, Elizabeth Sibeko and Fred Hampton Jr. The Syracuse U professor can contact me and maybe I’ll make some introductions for him to some grass roots organizers.

Now Horace Campbell wants to articulate the Zimbabwe question. ZANU has never attacked another African state, tho they and the Tanzanians were tempted when Malawi assisted SADF's destabilization of the Mozambique revolution by providing bases for Renamo. ZANU has not behaved as a counterinsurgency force in Africa, despite Campbell's comparisons to Savimbi’s UNITA or Taylor. I kno Campbell is considered a heavyweight, yet imposing US bourgeois democratic standards on Imperialism’s new hot potato in Africa, he offers no solutions to contradictions which degrade life all over the Motherland. The fixes he wants for Zimbabwean society cannot be implemented from Syracuse U.

Imperialism’s transformation under neo-conservatism -- Naomi Klein’s book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, offers the most definitive analysis for the New Millennium to date -- reveals the extent to which Campbell, Bill Fletcher and the rest of the crew actually tail the masses. In the end, Imperialism will make a clean sweep of Southern Africa behind pretexts provided them by neo-colonial social workers.

Meanwhile, straw man Matambanadzo’s unsubstantiated screwball allegations faced challenges but the small audience’s anti-Mugabe contingent shouted down and castigated my efforts to correct the record. Black Voices required no substantiation for his ridiculous claims.

Working class attendees seemed at a loss to sum up the event in their usual gracious terms, because the professor’s bizarre views conflicted with African Liberation Day tradition.

The speaker even said Zimbabwe’s inflation rate is one million percent, an unheard of ratiocination by any modern economics standard. He repeated this assertion for emphasis. Long before reaching 1,000,000% inflation, it would be more efficient for peasants to acquire foreign paper than for the government to print so many worthless denominations. The media has put this lie into people's minds, while simultaneously claiming that the government ordered a shipload of Chinese manufacture weapons. Nevermind the payment process.

Plus, the instructor made this claim as if no world economic crisis exists, as if any African economy may withstand IMF/World Bank and WTO currency manipulations.

Matambanadzo yakked as tho his CIA training conflated his sense of arrogance. Yet only an irrepressibly stupid idiot would try to convince an audience that 1,000,000% inflation exists in a country which fought for its freedom. As if nobody can take up arms against this alleged monster of a regime. Confronting mismanagement on the level presented by the exile professor, Zimbabwe’s seasoned army could easily coup the mis-leader Mugabe.

This Ph.D. denied the critical role ZANU fighters played in bringing about a negotiated settlement after years of violent warfare. ZANLA fighters kept Ian Smith‘s apartheid regime off balance and unable to operate. Matambanadzo gave all credit to UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for settling all scores. He discredited anything ZANU ever accomplished.

He disavowed all reasons for ZANU having ever been immensely popular thru out the African world. Bob Marley played his greatest concert at Zimbabwe’s independence celebration. COSATU’s General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has in the past made unqualified remarks expressing admiration and support for ZANU-PF because it assisted freedom fighters. South Africa’s black presidents and members of other liberation movements from Mozambique to Tanzania have in years gone by fiercely defended the ZANU-PF fighting tradition.

Chalk ZANU popularity up to an X-File, if we may believe Black Voices for Peace.

Gail Alston joined the attack on ZANU for the AIDS epidemic, for masses of orphans, for patriarchy and sexism and other ills. Of course, AIDS coincidentally entered Africa as colonialism came to an end there. She asserted the former colonial regime had made life better for Africans. Matambanadzo strongly agreed, saying that Africans were better paid and trade unions had greater freedom when the Rhodesians held power.

Black Voices’ Fred Logan summed up that Africans did not suffer from these conditions under colonialism altho, he said, opposition to white domination seemed to form a sharper struggle than the one against ZANU’s “black capitalism”.

The Black Internationalist stance does not mean ZANU and its leadership do not have profound contradictions, that they may be at odds with the Zimbabwean masses, and that there may even exist a powerful neo-colonial sector there allied with Imperialism. But black capitalism is not necessarily Imperialist, and certainly not the primary contradiction, altho it remains odious. We must understand, the petty bourgeoisie in our community have always transformed from their militant garb when they recognized “race” peace. Telling sensational accounts of the Zimbabwean first lady’s wardrobe is best left for Jet Magazine. Spreading outright and obvious mendacities to support a half-baked analysis does not separate Black Voices from their criticisms of ZANU.

Imperialism remains the root cause of antagonistic relationships within society. Freedom fighters must continue to develop the analysis of Imperialism and build an ideological culture war to combat conditions imposed on us from this system. Instead, the “Black Left” provides ideological justifications for white power attacks on the comradeship of African peoples.

Because Matambanadzo hails from Zimbabwe, must we credentialize him as an authority? We would have accepted Yonah Alexander’s word on terrorism in 1985 in that case, the former think tank advisor to Reagan’s NSA. When he made his racist propaganda speech at CCAC back then, student and community activists lit into him like a pit bull on a pork chop. That type of response is now being rebuilt so that African Internationalism can shape black workers power.

Pittsburgh has a small activist community where cronyism and self-aggrandizement has in the past scarred mass perceptions of liberation politics. Contradictions which demobilized the once-promising Little Haiti BRC emerge out of this background. In the climate of a racist, predatory war, such forces have now become bold enuf to attack Black liberation in the open.

At the same time, Pittsburgh’s black workers have a great reputation for struggle. Many of us kno that the liberation dialectic does not involve criticism of this character. Black Voices “anti-capitalism” alongside Matambanadzo’s anti-dialectical propagandizing sharply contrasts with the Black Internationalist workers who have historically upheld African liberation and the day which commemorates it. It was rank how the reactionaries jumped up to pass out hugs and handshakes when they declared an end to their revisionist putsch.

ALD’s format for discussing contradictions within the liberation movement has been to frame that struggle within the context of Imperialism. Because, of course, dialectics is the study of contradictions. Unbridled attacks on black states permit Imperialism to move boldly against our friends and support our enemies. Black Voices and Horace Campbell’s 2003 article both invoke the name of Fidel Castro, but the Cuban Revolution has not made public criticisms of Zimbabwe. That difference draws the distinction between empiricism, and dialectics.

Imperialism, the fusion of industrial and banking finance, was called the highest stage of capitalism by Lenin. Nkrumah stated that neo-colonialism constitutes the final stage of Imperialism, making Klein’s book all the more relevant. African people have our contradictions with Mugabe. However, proposing impractical textbook “paradigms” for Zimbabwe, while offering up pretexts for Imperialism’s destabilization of another African state is counterinsurgency and neo-colonialism. The primary contradiction continues to be US Imperialism, which remains the enemy of Black Internationalists and the genuine African liberation movement in everywhere.