Wrong On Libya

I perhaps should have begun posting about this last week, when it became clear Qaddafi wasn't going to fall on his own and was, in fact, pressing down on the rebels all the way to Benghazi. I "misunderestimated" (to use a Bushism) the strength of the rebel forces. (To my credit, at least, it turned out to be more a matter of firepower than a matter of will.)

Yet the U.S. and coalition airstikes - codenamed "Operation Odyssey Dawn" - will prove a Faustian deal. Even if Western boots remain planted on Western aircraft carriers, none of us are so naive as to think this is out of the kindness of anyone's hearts. It is always a ploy for markets, oil as much as imports (Libya is 10% reliant on China for its imported goods, and if the Obama administration is serious about reviving manufacturing, we'll need increase our export markets).

But the model of the Western imperialists is actually not to have to occupy countries if they don't have to (Bush was an anomaly in this sense). They want an ally in Northern Africa to moderate in case Tunisia and Egypt don't go in their favor.

Obama also has spoken about Qaddafi's violation of the Libyan people's "universal rights." I remind our readers that it wasn't all that long ago that China and the United States butted heads over this rather philosophical argument. (Chinese leaders think of this phrase as being code for "Western values" and insist that different peoples have different values ... kind of the forerunners in global postmodernism?)

So basically all the old-school imperialists are banding together and having a good ole fashion show of force, brandishing the sabres and sending a message to Iran and China and any other regime they don't agree with that universal rights aren't negotiable, that you have to respect your people's right to protest and their right to free speech.

Because universal rights apply to our geopolitical enemies first, our friends last, and ourselves.... You get the picture.

(And I'm not even going to touch the cost of this intervention in dollar terms. You shouldn't put a price on human freedom, in my opinion. Political rhetoric, however, will latch on to any excuse to slash living conditions....)

"Fire the rockets! ... and the teachers, and municipal employees, and construction workers, and...."

Invention vs. Intervention

I'm not speaking on any particular concrete basis today - I don't have any specific articles to back me up. But I did read on the cover of the Wall Street Journal today that "US sees stalemate in Libya." Yet I cannot accept that there will be anything so cut and dry as an East Libya/West Libya separation.

There are no superpowers to draw and uphold such lines now. This isn't the Cold War. Qaddafi has no imperial backer.

And he won't accept anything less than a reassertion of his power, and the annihilation of the rebel movement. If anything like a stalemate develops, even over the course of years, it will simply mean protracted bloodshed and victory to the side that develops new tactics. Even with superior firepower on the side of the tyrant, my money is on the rebels. Qaddafi has 1970s' tactics and some planes and helicopters and a heart of ice. But the rebels are honing their wits day after day.

The US is still trying to decide its angle. It still frets over the "character" of the rebellion. We know it will support a re-establishment of the monarchy (if its assessment of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are indicators). But blocked on the UN and so far unable to parse through international law, it looks like the world's police force may be sitting this one out, for the time being.

No easy parallels, not even a 38th.

There is no substitution for a people's revolution.

The United States and the "international community" (read: global state capitalists) are attempting to hijack Libya's revolution, in a sense. To poor effect. The imperialist powers are scrambling to make their voices heard now that madman Muammar Qaddafi met his people's democratic demands with extreme violence and repression.

The problem? Once again: too fucking little, too fucking late.

(Not to mention the fact that this total arsewipe has no interest in playing by any rules but his own and their treatment of him sounds like dialogue from a work of absurdist theater. "The United States, France and other Western powers are trying to remove Libya from the 47-member Human Rights Council." Really? What the blue fuck was Qaddafi doing on there in the first place??)

Libya is a complicated situation in that Qaddafi does not represent Western neo-colonial interests, but is instead a fossil of the anti-colonial movements that swept the "third world" after the rise of the Soviet Union. He is, of course, no less a despot, and so his half-baked claims to Marxism are about as laughable as his allegations that Al Qaeda drugged his rebelling population, or that Wikileaks is a CIA conspiracy to overthrow the enemies of the United States (you know, enemies like Hosni Mubarak....).

So history, as history so often does, is cleaning house, deposing the archaic despots of the Middle East with little regard to their allegiances. It is a "combined and uneven" housecleaning, of course, one that has so far spared the monarchs in favor of the pretenders to democracy. But "Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi — neither a king nor a president" (sez NYT, accurately), responds in his own idiosyncratic way, ie, mowing down demonstrators with machine guns and hiring mercenaries to plug the holes left by defectors to his regime.

The Obama administration gained an unfavorable reputation during the Tunisian, Egyptian, and Bahraini uprisings. O didn't have much to say about Tunisia until Bin Ali fled. He stood on the sidelines with Mubarak and let his administration make conflicting assessments; Biden and Clinton painted the Egyptian despot as a stable ally, for example. That was egg on the admin's face almost as soon as the words were out of their mouths.

Granted the response to Libya, where Qaddafi has long operated as a gadfly to the West and attempted to woo African and Middle Eastern radicals for decades, might have required a little more consideration. How and when do you intervene when an antagonistic nutcase turns on his own people? The Obama administration seemed to want to find straight historical precedents ("it's like Somalia, or wait, we don't want this to be like Rwanda ... or can it be more like Kosovo....) when they ought to have been thinking a little more dialectically (what are the historical forces in play in Libya and the region and how do they interact).

For example, I think few of the instances where the United States has been involved in the last century showcase such bravery, determination, and agency on the part of the population involved. The mistake is in how anti-Qaddafi forces have been characterized.

These are not helpless demonstrators. These are not Kuwaitis clamoring for outside aid. As far as I know, no forces inside Libya have yet called on the "international community" for help. Some of Qaddafi's strongmen have defected and are training the rebels - and effectively. The rebels are seizing government weapons caches and pushing back the Colonel's forces.

They are creating a provisional government in Benghazi.

This isn't a humanitarian crisis for the United Nations to intervene in. This isn't even a civil war with two sides bogged down and exchanging blows. This is a revolution, the beginning of a whole new order.

not so bored now, are ya, asshole?

Sending Hilary Clinton to Geneva for international talks will end up being a waste of federal money. By the time the talks wind down, Qaddafi will be swinging from a lamp post (Allah willing). For Chrissake! Compared to the capacity of working people and activists to coordinate these actions in a democratic and nearly real-time manner through social media, international talks are like watching a brontosaurus wake up from a nap.

The best thing the "international community" can do is freeze Qaddafi's assets. By the time they've done anything else, they'll be dealing with a whole new government. Who are you going to impose a no-fly zone on then, huh? Yeah. S'what I thought.

Wake up and smell the incense, guys. The cutting edge of democratic change in the world has done a radical shift and the West is in danger of getting left behind. Without an urgent reassessment, the capitalist democracies are going to find themselves on the wrong side of history, much like Qaddafi - not any time soon, but too soon for comfort.

The support of democracy ought to be a geopolitical strategy.

Of course all this underlines how antiquated our whole political system has become, not just our foreign policy paradigm (which is still influenced by Cold Warriors, sadly). To address the necessary changes in our domestic structure is a task for another day.

Friedman clouds important issues ... as usual.

I know this is no surprise to my small audience, but Thomas Friedman - an incredibly influential economist and political commentator - has quite a flawed method of reasoning. Below I will respond to his article "B.E., Before Egypt. A.E., After Egypt," which was published February 1st in the NYT. But I would also like to point out that this is the man who wrote The World is Flat, a naive argument that technology resulting from capitalist globalization creates an "even playing field" for economic actors. While the world of communication has radically altered, creating with it a young global culture, the economics have not caught up and cannot catch up on the basis of capitalist production. Anyway, to the issue at hand.

POINT: Friedman's "retired Israeli general" tells him from the opening, "everything we thought for the last 30 years is no longer relevant.”

REFUTATION: All of the joint US-Israel strategy over the last 30 years was antagonistic to the Arab world. It is not merely "outdated," it was unsustainable, imperialistic, and unrealistic in the first place.

POINT: "The peace treaty with a stable Egypt was the unspoken foundation for every geopolitical and economic policy in Israel for the last 35 years, and now it’s gone. It’s as if Americans suddenly woke up and found both Mexico and Canada plunged into turmoil on the same day."

REFUTATION: This comparison is ridiculous. Israel's border with Egypt is tiny. The US borders with Mexico and Canada, two geographically and demographically huge countries, are likewise enormous. The United States is still able to dictate policy to much of the world (though in a decreasing capacity). Egypt is one neighbor; Canada and Mexico are two, and our only two, and the only two other countries on North America's mainland, at that. Israel and Egypt are both part of a complex overlapping geopolitical network that includes Europe, the Mediterranean, the "Middle East," North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the "Arab World," the "Muslim World" ... the list goes on. The religious complexities of the region alone warrant in-depth analysis, not Friedman's platitudes.

POINT: Friedman hammers home Iranophobia in a not-so-crafty way by quoting a "Tel Aviv strategist" to paint a superficial Middle East backdrop for all of us paying superficial attention: "And it [the Egyptian Revolution] is happening right at a moment when nuclearization of the region hangs in the air."

REFUTATION: This region is "nuclearized." It's an open secret that Israel has WMDs, including nuclear capacities. Shame on Friedman for reinforcing American ignorance about the complexity - and the history - of the weapons situation.

POINT: Friedman says, "The best time to make any big, hard decision is when you are at your maximum strength. You’ll always think and act more clearly," and goes on to point out Mubarak had 30 years to introduce reforms to his country.

REFUTATION: Friedman apparently doesn't understand how a dictatorship works. Having a single strongman give the orders in a militarized security state isn't conducive to progressive developments. If democracy had been Mubarak's goal he would have pressed for changes to Egypt's constitution upon becoming President. A dictator "think[ing] and act[ing] more clearly" means only more thoroughly curtailing freedoms and curb-stomping public cries for liberty.

POINT: "Now he [Mubarak] is trying to reform in a panic with no leverage."

REFUTATION: Appointing new ministers and "promising" to step down in the fall are not reforms. They are executive window-dressing. "Reform" actually involved changes to the laws that keep the dictatorship in place, ending the curfews and the state of emergency. A tyrant will not make reforms; he stoops to grant "concessions." Nothing about what Mubarak has done changes the power of his office or sets a precedent of democracy.

POINT: "[I]t is virtually certain that the next Egyptian government will not have the patience or room that Mubarak did to maneuver with Israel."

REFUTATION: Friedman neglects to mention the U.S.'s vested interest in making sure the transitional government will play ball, and probably any government after that. Will they use force to prop it up? If necessary, you betcha. Friedman is propagating a naivete that harms the worldview of everyday Americans. It is the responsibility of writers, journalist, economists, political nerds, etc. etc. to dig down deep for the truth, not dumb down analysis until it whitewashes the importance of geopolitical strategy.

POINT: "With the big political changes in the region, 'if Israel remains paranoid and messianic and greedy it will lose all its Arab friends.'" Embedded quotation attributed to "Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian pollster."

REFUTATION: Arab friends, huh? Israel has been paranoid and messianic and greedy for the almost 30 years I've been alive. It's astounding to me that they would have Arab friends even now, and any buddies they may have strike me as very good examples of the possible beauty of the human spirit. And also a bunch of people who are very, very scared of the U.S. military. Let's face it: Israel is never going to gain acceptance in the Middle East by siding with the U.S. and pursuing a policy of fear. That is one(?) country and two(?) populations that need to do some serious soul-searching now, as many pundits have pointed out. Let's hope for the sake of the Israeli people (and not necessarily its government....) that this soul-searching won't come too late.

POINT: "What the turmoil in Egypt also demonstrates is how much Israel is surrounded by a huge population of young Arabs and Muslims who have been living outside of history — insulated by oil and autocracy from the great global trends. But that’s over."

REFUTATION: Just the term "living outside of history" is enough to make my blood boil! No one lives "outside of history," no one, anywhere, ever. That is some kind of weird neoliberal fetish. "The end of history." "Stuck in the dark ages." No one is immune to history. Mubarak is falling prey to thinking he could insulate himself from the past. His clique thinks barbed wire can keep out thousands of young folks possessed by memory and empowered by hope. The U.S. thinks it can treat "backwards" - sorry, "developing," that's the word we use now - nations like puppets and pawns. The Middle East has not been "insulated" by the great global trends; it is a shaper of great global trends. Oil and autocracy are facts of the last 100 years. They are a part of our history and give form to our mode of transit, our cities, our foreign policy, our language, our unconscious anxieties and fears and expectations. Until we grapple (never to conquer) with the full dialectical extent of these issues we are victims of history rather than its inhabitants.

POINT: "It is vital for Israel’s future — at a time when there is already a global campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state — that it disentangle itself from the Arabs’ story as much as possible."

REFUTATION: You ever had someone you don't care for, say a family member, or a significant other's friend, come stay with you for a period of time? And at first you don't like them, you rail against their being there, you butt heads a lot? And then perhaps things settle down for a while, you find some common ground, etc. But maybe they don't get a job, or they don't earn their keep, and you get frustrated and tell them, "Shape up or ship out." Israel deserves to exist now partly by virtue of it having existed so long that it has integrated into the Middle East dynamic. It is impossible to "delegitimize" the "Jewish state" by any convincing force of narrative. But I do think it's completely reasonable that the Arabic narrative too take a dialectical change, that the people of Egypt want democracy and they want it to be safe from their militarized neighbors. It's only fair that these people have the opportunity to live in harmony. Good leaders would arrange more dialogue between the populaces of these countries, foster good feelings, talk about cultural values and common grounds. (What a hippy, Dresden!)

POINT: "There is a huge storm coming, Israel. Get out of the way."

REFUTATION: The storm is here. Friedman, you and your bad reasoning are about to get swept to sea.

And perhaps the entire notion, the paradigm even, of America as the City on the Hill, the light of freedom and opportunity for people all over the world, is on the wane, just as our own democracy is on the wane. This country has experienced a dialectical shift from the inspiration and model to the very barrier of the ideals it once pioneered. New models, global models, fueled by communication technology and ideas of participation and new, innovative solutions are in order. They have not yet been born; they have been struggling for form and articulation since the Tennis Court Oath. And there have been false blooms and flashes in the pan but now there are new challenges, new hopes, and America's ruling class paradigms and their dialectical opposites aren't going to cut it. We will be in doldrums for a long time yet.

Denounce Mubarak!

Barak Obama promised change; hundreds of thousands of stubborn, fed-up Tunisians and Egyptians have delivered.

And I realize the United States is missing a tremendous - no, historic opportunity to raise its clout. To look, for the first time in decades, like it legitimately cares about democracy and self-determination over its own geopolitical dominance. Yet so far Obama and Hillary Clinton have done nothing but offer pathetic words of support for the tyrant Mubarak. Their lack of a strong stance in favor of Egyptian democracy plays down the influence America could have in the white-hot forge of revolution.

As it is, our lack of support makes us look like assholes. Our lack of mass pressure on Obama makes us look like we all support Arabian dictators.

All the government officials are scrambling to keep up with the opposition leaders, to see if its "someone they can work with," musing whether or not their precious Israli peace can be maintained. But the wisest way to ensure a government hospitable to American interests is to declare support for the people's self-determination. Through the revolution, they, as in Tunisia, will struggle until they get a government with which they are satisfied.

Media sources also continue to point out a "lack of leadership." Also bullshit. Every single one of these protesting Egyptians is a leader. Simply because they haven't (yet? or won't?) had the need to create a hierarchy doesn't mean they are weak or cannot democratically control their own economy and lives. Perhaps Egypt and Tunisia serve as a warning to all those who cling to obsoleting notions of "the political party" as the summit of society's functionality.

The people are doing it for themselves. Classical democracy is making a comeback, empowered by technologies and the internets. Do Americans really want to serve a government that stands in the way of that?

UPDATE: It seems the Prime Minister of Turkey knows how to vie for the respect of the new revolutionary generation. Hell, even Iran is trying to get its foot in the door. For shame, America. You fail at counter-balancing your own imperialist boogeyman.

Free Julian Assange

Dividing Assange from journalism by calling him "politically motivated" put the U.S. government in the position to shut down anything it doesn't deem as "politically neutral," which covers anything from Fox News to Mother Jones magazine. It makes my organization's independently-published newspaper vulnerable to scrutiny and suppression. And it continues to expand the notion that the government has secrets, that the democracy has insiders, that a (supposedly) democratically-run country can pick and choose what it releases to the public about its own action, that only itself can hold itself accountable to the people, that it is essentially an independently bodied entity wherein lies "politics" and that is ITS jurisdiction, where the will of the governed is unsubstantial in fact. A truly democratic country would be transparent, sharing its decisions and results and discourse with every citizen, so that every elected official acting our behalf would be accountable and recallable to us. The breakneck pace of events in this day and age means a need for an IMMEDIATELY accountable government that can respond to collective discourse.

In short: make the U.S. government's business the people's business. Institute rules for a recall of all public officials, elected or appointed. Free Julian Assange.

http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/12/journalists_and_political_obje.php#more

Wikileaks "Cablegate": government cover-ups revealed

I need do little more than point you fine folks to the Guardian's assessment of today's Wikileaks release, diplomatic cables showing all the closed-door policies and deals our unelected bureaucracy has been making.

The State Department condemns Wikileaks for putting US interests in danger. But as far as I've been able to tell the last 10 years (or longer!) US interests have been decidedly AGAINST the interests of working Americans and innocent people around the globe. So I proudly commend Wikileaks and the brave folks who find this information and make it available for the eyes of the world.

Information can't be bottled up, can't be suppressed. Especially now, in the 21st century, an age of communication ... immorality is no longer tolerable. Least of all from our governments. Accountability! Transparency! Justice!

the front lines are everywhere

Here are some scattered articles about American fascism and decline.

• "Beijing isn't playing fair! Why isn't this backwards, uppity country doing what I want? Play American, assholes, or we'll start prying at your world interests!" They even say "Old-fashioned balance-of-power style diplomacy." Well, we internationalists are back on familiar grounds....
• "Hey, you can't go spying on diplomats when we're telling the truth! You have to wait for the canned messages. We're servants of the empire, not some common riffraff you can put on a surveillance camera!"
• First Bush, now Palin. I'm starting to think mis-speak is a conservative tactic to win over the less literate element in society, maybe some kind of linguistic anti-intellectual meme?
• Small business Saturday: little businesses are just baby big-businesses. But of course in today's political environ, the capitalist titans are in turmoil and the aging petty bourgeois, stirred by their decades of mis-education by mass media, are gaining confidence.
• Entrapment: nuff said on the case of the Christmas tree kid. "Mohamud believed he was receiving help from a larger ring of jihadists as he communicated with undercover federal agents, but no foreign terrorist organization was directing him, according to a law-enforcement official." The government is in constant threat of being torn down from all directions. All they need to do is find the group they want lynched and lure out the weirdos. Then its "OH NO SOMALIS." "OH NO, MUSLIMS." When thirty years ago it was "OH NO COMMUNISTS." And thirty years before that, "OH NO FASCISTS." There are so-called patriots in our midst who'd overthrow the government if they thought they could set up a goddamn dictatorship, and throw out all the colored folks.

Official lies are in full-swing this week, my friends.

Blame America

America needs some fucking tough love right now. Listen to me, guys, somebody should've told you this a long time ago, or maybe they have been and you're just ... not ... listening. Take out the iPod earbuds and turn off the TV a minute. No, you can't just leave it on mute and watch it behind my back. I want to talk to you about something serious here. I think you have a problem. I think you've been acting like a goddamn lot of children.

You know how after you graduate college, you pretend for a little while that you're a real adult cuz you're out on your own, but really you have no goddamn idea what's going on, and you don't care because you want to do things your way, but "your way" is really just an excuse for being irresponsible and putting the blame on everybody else, and meanwhile your bills stack up and you end up paying a lot of your very hard-earned money on debt collectors and overdraft fees - but that's ok, cuz you're doing it your way, you're making your mistakes, you convince yourself that these mistakes are what it means to be free and there's a learning curve. It doesn't matter if debts and overdrafts are unfair, all you need to do is perfect your approach, and it'll all come together.

Come to find out it doesn't work like that.

It is exactly your blundering insistence on individuality that seals your goddamn doom. You know what's being done is unfair. (It's the same way with wars and the economy and rush hour traffic.) As long as you keep doing things your way, you'll be ok, it will be somebody else's problem, the trouble isn't you, it's all those goddamn other people who support the war or take the freeway home. Or it's the government's fault for letting banks get away with stuff. Eventually the government will catch on, right? - you'll keep voting and eventually you'll get a politician who'll be like, "Whelp, bout time to hold the banks accountable," and you won't have to pay overdraft fees again.

And that's exactly what happened - except increasingly now the so-called "middle class" is relying on paycheck advance - once a quaint feature of the topolganger lower class neighborhoods, now available in the common grounds of WalMart and internet banking. Which, as of this writing, isn't that popular a subject on the internet, despite outrageously high APR (120% at US Bank). Some US states made paycheck advance illegal; however, the point is that by sitting by and letting some nebulous "someone else" deal with it, we let "someone else" dictate the terms and conditions of our lives.

We act as though as long as we mind our own business, nothing is going to bother us. Having to think about politics or the economy isn't as important as doing our job and feeding our families. We just want to be left alone. That's all the American Dream has come down to: "Shut up and let me sleep."

9/11 was a rude awakening many people are still trying to out-maneuver. Terrorism - can't be bothered to examine the cause of it, must have some easy answer like "they hate us" (a sullen child's analysis if I've ever heard one). Here are a panel of experts (who made them experts? Who knows), I will copy down what they say, I will use it as a shortcut to absolve myself of responsibility. I cannot be held responsible for my country's foreign policy; it's just not up to me! I'm trying to work and have a family here, I'm upholding my part of the bargain by pursuing the American Dream, look what they have on sale for me today. ("Heart-shaped potholders? It's like they knooowwww me!!")

In reality, the system we allow to run rampant kills people abroad and enslaves them to corporate interests. We all know our government and our corporations are doing things that are downright abominable, things that would make our skin run cold if we could actually stand in the presence of the events. If we could watch an Afghani wedding party get blown up by a drone, it would fucking break us. Instead we hide from our complicity and make fucking excuses. "It's too hard, it's too much, I'm just one person, what am I supposed to do, I know it's wrong but what choice do I have, no one else is doing anything so I won't make any difference."

You fucking slimeballs. You've ingested all this stuff about how America is the best country in the world, and you parrot that, but you won't stand up against injustice? What kind of legacy do you think has been passed down to you? Cowardice? Helplessness? Apathy? Are these the values you stand for? Do you think you're doing your children, or your siblings, or your parents, your friends and coworkers any favors by standing on society's sidelines and shrugging like a sociopath? No wonder we can't look one another in the eyes. No wonder we snap at the fast food workers who get our orders wrong, or the retail worker whose been on her feet eight hours with a holiday line that never seems to move for her or you. You choose not to have empathy, because that might mean your little nugget of a head for once.

And you have no idea, not one goddamn clue, what's out there, do you?

Colombia Part II: oh for FARC's sake

I am so late with this blog post. Bad blogger, Dresden. Bad.

Much like the US government, I blame this problem on FARC. In and of itself, there just isn't a very interesting lesson going on here that hasn't been learned or discussed on the left a bajilion times. Basically the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia are a guerrilla freedom-fighting group that funds itself off kidnappings and taxing the drug trade. Not very honorable, or indeed revolutionary, tactics.

A Marxist group really ought to know better. A truly revolutionary group orients itself towards the industrial proletariat and the more forward-thinking intelligentsia, and picks up members of and influence in other oppressed groups only because all these groups share a common struggle against capitalism. And Marxism is the only philosophy, the only systematic approach that can link these struggles. Naturally Marxists shouldn't just waltz into other people's struggles and elbow in on the action, but should operate in advisory and solidarity capacities. At the same time, these organizations should not lose themselves in what amount to ultimately futile peasant uprisings. Such uprisings have their place in revolutionary situations but do not make sustainable socialist revolutions of their own; without the organized proletariat, industrial capital cannot develop sufficiently to raise the society fully beyond the reach of capitalism.

The kidnappings and drug involvement are also bad for P.R., of course.

Sure, you can attribute it to the difficulties of their situation. But you have to make some compromises according to your situation, and it's better to disband and infiltrate urban society than to hole up in jungle bunkers and draw military attention.

And don't think this means letting the US and Colombian governments off the hook. Oh no. Declaring FARC a "terrorist" organization isn't exactly conciliatory. There's all sorts of strategery in occupying this particular country, especially to maintain a counter-balance to Venezuela. So long as this US-imposed violence continues to tear apart the region, there is no space for a true and peaceful socialist revolution in Latin America.

Colombia, Part I: the Capitalism of Coffee

The more I read about Colombia, the awfuller the situation sounds. But I won't get ahead of myself.

The country has one of the most diverse geographies in Latin America, which is saying a lot. This leads to a corresponding diversity of agriculture and industry and its potential wealth is impressive.

You may have noticed in the news that coffee prices are going up, especially as Colombian coffee growers "go green." American retailers have been slow to reflect that price - for a variety of reasons. (One of which is we'd hang the bastards! You don't fuck with our coffee. It's in the Constitution.) One of those reasons is that it's still a challenge to find Fair Trade coffee in many places in America (Minneapolis is one gratifying exception!). Coffee futures are also on the rise after bad weather affected crops throughout the region. The US also imports its coffee from a variety of places. All the resources I've checked imply that of those countries which export coffee to the US, Brazil is the most notable, followed by Vietnam, Colombia, and Indonesia in some order. (Although Colombia seems to be the #1 import for "green," or raw, beans.) Perhaps the production and trade of beans and blends is too complicated to reduce in a way that draws clear lines. That's globalization for you.

But no doubt about it, corporations are interested in Colombia. (Where don't they stick their nose?) In 2006, the United States and Colombia entered into a free trade agreement, the text of which seems pretty typical of such a pro-business arrangement - even though over the last 10 years Americans have become increasingly hostile to the practice. (On a for-profit basis, "free trade" hurts workers in every country.)

"So what is this, Drez, some kind of coffee conspiracy?"

Au contrair. A conspiracy implies some kind of secret shared by insiders. Injustices in the coffee production system are often a result of haphazard business practices and a lack of developed alternatives. But we all know the military intervenes in the affairs of sovereign nations to protect US business interests. So in our next installment I'll take a look at the American presence in Colombia, the role of FARC, and just what is going down in this particular corner of the world.

The Flotilla Massacre

Why confront Israel?

Sabrina Tavernise and Michael Slackman of the New York Times pointed out in a recent article that "the [Free Gaza Movement] has hit on a strategy that, even when it fails in its aims, succeeds in tactical terms: The world sees Israel use military force against civilians." Free Gaza was successful several times in delivering aid to the oppressed people of Palestine. But like any good activist group, their aims didn't end there. They don't simply aim to alleviate the suffering of oppressed Palestine; they aim to expose that suffering and its causes and thereby draw out the powers that can eliminate that suffering.


The oppression has two main causes: the barbaric state of Israel, and the barbaric tactics of Hamas. Like so many so many oppressed groups, the oppression of the Palestinians is as much a product of the so-called "liberation" groups as the immediate oppressors. While both sides would like to portray this as a binary conflict with their "side" on the side of good and right and justice, it's abundantly clear that both sides use mistaken tactics - constantly.


Palestinian children have been shot for throwing rocks at Israeli police-soldiers. Hamas fired rockets that provoked an all-out war in 2008. Resistance tactics are pitiful gnats in the rhino-hide of the police state, but the buzzing of the gnat gets it swatted. But even relatively peaceful tactics, such as kneeling in front of a bulldozer in the desperate effort to cease the destruction of Palestinian homes, cleared for Israeli settlers, are met with unprecedented brutality on the part of Israel.


Here in America, I think this conflict has actually been a tremendous contributor to the festering cynicism of the last forty years. It manifests directly in erroneous statements like "those people [generally meaning Jews and Arabs] have been fighting for thousands of years." (When in fact, for most of their history, the religions of Judaism and Islam have been relatively tolerant of one another.) It's part of this whole idea that human nature is corrupt, and these two groups will never see eye-to-eye (essentially playing into the popular idea of the subjectiveness of truth) , etc. and so on.

Worst of all, among centrists, and including a lot of the center-left (liberals) there is an idea that one side or the other cannot be criticized. Because it's somehow wrong to criticized oppressed people? Some people say it is wrong to criticize the tactics of the Palestinian people that support Hamas, because they live with the daily reality of Israeli occupation. (And believe me, most Americans wouldn't put up with the bullshit of being occupied by a police state. Now, a domestic police state, on the other hand....) And others say that Israel cannot be criticized, because basically Jews have been oppressed since the beginning of history, and they suffered greatly at the hands of the Nazis, and therefore any criticism of Israel is tantamount to anti-Semitism.

Well I call bullshit.

The only way we're ever going to make this planet a better place to live is by use of our critical reasoning skills. That means no one is above reproach. Hamas has to be held responsible for its very dangerous stupidity, and Israel has to face the blame for its routine practice of grossly disproportionate retaliation.

Who's going to do that? Certainly not the United States, who favors Israel at every fucking turn. None of the other major world governments are going to do it, either, because every single one of them is pursuing an agenda whereby they bid for power. And the only way for them to keep and expand that power is by robbing the working class at home and abroad.

In some regard, the confrontational tactics of the Free Gaza movement seem to have worked: the international capitalist class is now criticizing the blockade, at least. The issue has arrested global attention where once ignorance prevailed. Despite the right-wing's insistence that the blockade (against an essentially non-sovereign entity) is entirely legal (seriously?), the debate calls into question - once more - the character of Israel and the fate of the Middle East.

Naturally, the oppressed of both peoples actually need to rise up and throw off their mutual oppressors. Hamas is as detrimental to the well-being of Palestine as Israel; only cooperation along class lines can abolish the motivations for the bloodshed in this region. It isn't about religion; it's about land and hegemony and wealth.

ADDENDUM: And, in other, less weighty news, Facebook is no longer cool. (Officially, I mean; it's been losing cred for a long long time.)

Bush has "visited 20 states and 8 countries; given over 65 speeches; launched the George W Bush Presidential Center; participated in 4 policy conferences through The Bush Institute; finished the first draft of his memoir, "Decision Points"; and partnered with (former) President Clinton to establish the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund." Seriously? How has he not been arrested for war crimes by now?

On the hues of kettles and pots.

For this post I was first inspired by a quote from South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in response to the alleged torpedoing of a warship by the North Koreans : "We had been forgetting ... the reality that this country faces the most belligerent regime in the world."

It's like the guy is totally oblivious to the character of his own goddamn ally. You know, the one his country is conducting military drills with "in case North Korea invades" (really it's just a provocative show of force).


Today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has insisted that North Korea end what she calls its "policy of belligerence."

Uh-hunh.

Can we review the list? The US is conducting operations officially in two countries - as an open secret in three more (Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia), and has its fingers in plenty of other places, most notably in South America. The only other major power in recent years to actively invade a sovereign nation was the Russian attack on Georgia, for which the Ruskies caught a ton of flak (but, of course as it is still one of the world powers, no tangible reprucussions). No other country in the world but the good ole US of A is waging five major military operations simultaneously.

But that's all par for the course the most benevolent country in the world, which, incidentally, has been attempting the multi-regional occupation for two decades now.

And, not coincidentally, par for the course for the ally of another of the world's most belligerent nations.

But that's how it goes: On the world stage, might still makes right.