PRETTY IN PINK OR A PALE IMITATION?

'Osama Bin Laden is either alive and well or alive and not too well or not alive.’ Donald Rumsfeld October 2002

‘And it is not knowable if force will be used (in Iraq), but if it is to be used, it is not knowable how long that conflict would last. It could last, you know, six days, six weeks, I doubt six months.’ Donald Rumsfeld February 2003

PRETTY IN PINK OR A PALE IMITATION?

What a great day! The Democrats seize control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, the first self-proclaimed socialist, yes socialist, is elected to the Senate, Rummy resigns and the Nicaraguan cold war warrior, Daniel Ortega, is returned to power after 16 years. The great unwashed, aka the much maligned American electorate, have spoken. It looks like it may be the beginning of the end for the nasty neo-cons and, just to rub it in, one of their own backyard betes noires comes back to haunt them.

So can we now look forward to a more enlightened period in which progressive and rationalist elements are able to reassert themselves? Will some of the sacred cows that have been jettisoned i.e. adherence to the rule of law and a strict prohibition on torture, be reinstated?

With regard to the US, there’s clearly been a small shift back towards the centre and a desire for a more consensual politics. The black Democratic Senator and potential Presidential candidate, Barak Obama, has said that Americans are tired of the ‘slash and burn’ politics of the last few years and are searching for ‘common values and common ideals.’ That may be true but Obama himself is a good example of the lack of radicalism and continued allure of social conservatism. He wore God on his sleeve during his campaign as did other Democratic candidates, in a bid to break the Republican stranglehold on the Almighty. Bob Casey, the Democrat who was elected to the Senate in Pennsylvania, is a pro-life, Catholic. Support for stem cell research and gay marriage or legal union is about as good as it gets at the liberal end of the Party.

In Arizona, referendums proposing a whole raft of hard line immigration measures were all passed, as was one advocating a zero – tolerance approach to methamphetamine users. Illegal immigrants charged with a serious felony cannot now obtain bail and have had their access to public services severely restricted. English is now the official state language. On a more positive note, the minimum wage has been increased from $5.15 to $6.75 an hour and, last but not least, great news for calves and pregnant pigs who will now be guaranteed enough space to fully extend their limbs and turn around in their cages. Now that’s what I call radical!

And what of Ortega? He’s sold himself as a reformed character, saying that he’s no longer a revolutionary Marxist. Indeed, he actually adopted pink as his campaign colour. He’s insisted that foreign investment is welcome and that private capital would not be under threat. Astonishingly, his Vice – Presidential running mate is a former Contra rebel (right – wing American backed paramilitaries who fought against his regime). To add insult to injury, he managed to change the electoral rules by cutting a deal with a reactionary former President in the country’s Legislature. He says that he still wants to put the country’s poor first and there are many of them. After Haiti, it’s the poorest country in Central America.

Following the Sandinista movement’s accession to power in 1979, production and consumption of food doubled and serious malnutrition disappeared. Not one single baby died for a year. But, in terms of redistribution etc, when he was voted out of office in 1990 (people, desperate for an end to civil war and the US blockade, were paid $40 each to vote for Violetta Chamorra, the Washington backed candidate) most of the economy was still in private hands. So, even then, the rhetoric was unable to be translated into reality.

Hamstrung by external interference, this has long tended to be the case as far as the left in South and Central America is concerned. Salvador Allende in Chile was hardly a Marxist but was always capable of convincing class – war rhetoric. His purpose was to stimulate the economy by implementing Keynesian (stimulating demand for goods and pursuing full – employment in a mixed economy) economic policies. He never sought to dismantle the Capitalist system and initiated moderate land reform and partial nationalization.

Today, for all his anti – Bush / American imperialist polemic (welcome though it is in terms of someone as high profile as a head of state being bold enough to challenge the world's super power) Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has a bark which is worse than his bite. His anti – imperialist and redistributionist measures constitute irritants to rather than a full – frontal assault on Capital. In 2001, he introduced a law requiring the sale of untilled land to the landless and subsequently, the Venezuelan Congress voted to compel private banks to dedicate 20% of their lending portfolio to ‘micro – loans’ for small businesses and small plot farmers. He also instituted a new hydrocarbons law in 2001, such that the major oil multinationals (Exxon, BP, Shell etc), would only get to keep 70% of the revenues from the sale of Venezuelan crude, instead of 84%. In 2005, Chavez withdrew $20 billion of Venezuela’s petrodollars from the US Federal Reserve and deposited the money in an account with the International Bank of Settlement for Investment in Latin America.

I guess our perception on all these things depends on whether we see the glass as half full or half empty. Liberals in the US tend to put a positive gloss on any gains, however miniscule, which is fair enough. Unreconstructed socialists who hark back to a pre-Reagan / Thatcher era are less easily placated.

It remains to be seen whether the Democrats can re-claim the Presidency in 2008 and if those sacred cows can ever be fully restored. As for the first self-proclaimed socialist in the Senate, his name’s Bernie Sanders and he was elected in Vermont. He calls himself a ‘democratic socialist’ and has vowed to fight for the rights of working families and immigrants and against the war in Iraq.

Check out an excellent magazine called Dissent. On the Home Page there’s a great article by Daphne Aviater on Bolivia as well as the postscript to Nicholas Jahr’s article entitled ‘Corruption and Reconstruction in Liberia’ which I also highly recommend and can be found at: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=653

A MEMORABLE KISSINGER DIATRIBE

I wanted to share with you this delicious Henry Kissinger put down by Molly Ivins in the October 7th edition of the Arizona Daily Star:

The Old War Criminal is back. I try not to hold grudges, but I must admit I have never lost one ounce of rancour towards Henry Kissinger, that cynical, slithery, self-absorbed, pathological liar. He has all the loyalty and principle of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, whom Napolean described as “a piece of dung in a silk stocking.”

Come to think of it, Talleyrand looks pretty good compared to Kissinger, who always aspired to be Metternich (a 19th-century Austrian diplomat). Count the number of Americans and Vietnamese who died between 1969 and 1973 and see if you can find any indication he ever gave a damn.

As for Kissinger’s getting the Nobel Peace Prize, it is a thing so wrong it has come to define wrongness – as in, “As weird as the time Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize.”

TUCSON TOPS THE MILLION MARK

Tucson’s population has reached a million, making it the 39th most populace city in the US. It’s growing rapidly and is expected to be the 5th most populace by 2040. Maybe I was the millionth resident, I better get myself down to the Town Hall to see if there’s a prize on offer. You never know, maybe I’ll get a gift token for the local Reptile Store (photo on the way). Quite fancy a pet snake. Could call it Henry Talleyrand or Charles Maurice de Kissinger which I’m sure would please Molly! But I digress……

The population mix here is as follows: White: 58%; Hispanic: 32%; Black: 3%; American Indian: 2.5%; Asian/Pacific Islander: 2.5%; 2 or more races: 1.5%; Other: 0.5%. I have been pleasantly surprised at the diversity in Tucson, it’s greater than I expected. Tucson was under Spanish rule until 1821 when Mexico won its independence. In 1853/4, it became part of the US following the purchase of 30,000 square miles of Mexican territory for $10 million. Most of Arizona, along with nearly half of Mexican territory, was transferred to American ownership in 1848, following the Mexican / American war.

Apparently, there are 752, 270 vehicles registered in Pima County (in which Tucson is situated), 107,160 licensed dogs, 364 schools, 489 churches (there seems to be one every 200 or so metres), 68,000 residents with asthma,
41,258 swimming pools, 129 ATM’s, 645 traffic lights, 244 gas stations and 20,000 + streetlights. They do love licensing and logging everything here. There’s a notice in the park downtown which says that it’s illegal to drink beer without a license. I think I’ll apply for one just for the hell of it. Watch this space.