Greanville’s Tweetios: Eat them with reality

Winning by default—
Is there any honor in such victories?

Democrat Hochul: Swept to victory after GOP implosion

JUST ABOUT EVERYONE in progressive circles is wildly cheering the recent upset victory for the Dems in a heavily brainwashed district of Western New York (the 26th, formerly Jack Kemp’s political pasture), one of the state’s most reactionary precincts. They should sober up quick, in fact, prontissimo, and look squarely at what this triumph really means, and what it portends for the future of ordinary Americans.

• For starters, although it may be bad manners to point it out, as noted by Patrick Martin in his Republicans lose House seat in special election, the celebratory rhetoric (obligingly amplified by the libmedia) is,

“entirely bogus, since the congressional Democrats supported huge cuts in Medicare last year, as part of the Obama health care program, an issue that was used against them by the Republicans in their 2010 election rout. Today, both big business parties support cuts that would effectively destroy this critical entitlement program, while seeking to disguise their real intentions from the voters with demagogic declarations of their determination to “preserve and protect” Medicare.”

The warning is perfectly opportune because the victor, Kathy Hochul, supposedly overcame her opponent, GOP plutocrat Jane Corwin, by repeatedly promising to protect Medicare from any and all menaces, which, if recent history is any indication, should now definitely include her very own party. As Jimmy the Greek used to say, “Keep an eye on the hands, folks, the lips can only swear, but the hands can kill you.”

• Second, the nonstop gloating by the rabidly centrist Democrats since the first tallies were revealed, an explosion of exultation comparable to the chest-thumping we just observed in Obamaphile ranks upon the assassination—or shall we say, mafia-style rubout?—of Osama Bin Laden, is plainly misplaced. Even though the fount of genuine glory has long dried up in this confused republic, and that in such climate people are far more prone to be grateful for small favors, progressives need to start looking more carefully for their heroes and sources of vicarious gratification.

• Third, when it comes to Medicare and the Dims circumspection is absolutely necessary. Prominent Democrats are already making noises to the effect that Medicare needs some kind of reform “to strengthen it”…(haven’t we seen this movie before?), not in the Republican battle-ax style, but supposedly according to more benign Democratic formulas. Don’t fall for it, pal. As even the Prince of Fuckhards once said, “fool me once..you cain’t fool me again!”…it’s undeniable that such statements—clear and sinister enough for those who understand establishment code—are signals to the Dims’ paymasters throughout the oligarchy, a down payment in Beltway rhetoric for the coming offensive to reopen a national debate that is as bogus as it is urgent. This insider yada yada about America’s most important bastions of working class security is rendered more ominous by the silence of the Great Bloviator himself, yes, the Man from Destiny at 1600 Pennsylvania, who has yet to pronounce all tinkering with Medicare off the table.

There’s another element in the Hochul triumph that deserves more attention and less jubilation. The Democrats, as Churchill once charitably said about the United States, “always manages to do the right thing after trying everything else.” Fact is, even assuming the Democrats (I’m talking about the party’s leadership here) wanted to do the right thing and truly preserve and enhance Medicare instead of handing it over to the Wall Street wolves, a huuuge assumption given their well-documented treachery, it’s clear that in this special election the smug invocation of Medicare was a gift from above. Considering their suspect track record, and willingness to compromise with the Republicons every inch of the way, methinks they literally bumbled their way into this winning slogan, the tardy epiphany coming courtesy of sociopathic Randian follower Paul Ryan’s meltdown, coupled with the instructive spectacle of watching dozens of Republican scoundrels running for dear life and as far away as possible from the radioactivity of the Medicare issue, a program justly supported by most Americans.

SUMMATION

The Democratic party is useless, the graveyard of progressive impulses, the venting valve for revolutionary pressures, and an instrument that aptly reflects the decomposition of mainstream liberalism in our time and its scandalous inadequacy to offer solutions commensurate with the national and world crisis, both of which call for radical solutions. (“Radical” as in going to the root of a problem, fellas, not “extremist” which is entirely different. Remember that all good doctors practice radical, not liberal, medicine, or they would be being sued by the thousands out of business.)

It’s been a long long time since the Democratic party won a single vistory on its own merits and not as a result of public revulsion at the criminal overreach of the Republicans. Indeed, all major Democratic victories in the last four decades have resulted directly from Republican impudence and off-the-charts criminality, plus blind luck, not from any beneficial or principled action —an Oxymoron in the case of both parties.

Since LBJ’s days there’s been no real substantive progressive agenda, only hot air. The vacuum has been cheerfully filled by the primary “party” of the nation’s permanent government, the superrich, but, alas, even benighted America has its limits. As it’s bound to happen periodically, the Republicans can’t seem to avoid “shitting on the Virgin’s milk”—Spanish for going too far—and the Democrats get in by default, like a clueless Claudius, under the fraudulent yo-yo rules of the so-called two party system.

What to expect now

With their putative opponents on the run, in pathetic disarray, babbling all manner of idiotic excuses, will the Democrats have the requisite political intelligence to—at last—exploit this enormous advantage and drive a stick through the heart of the ghoulish GOP? Ah, a party with some recognizable remnant of integrity would do that, but we all know that intelligence has nothing to do with such choices. The huge victory of 2008, with the nation clamoring for change, and giving the winner a mandate for far-ranging reform by an almost 11-million ballot plurality, should have settled that question permanently. But what did the Dems do? From the moment Obama and his team assumed power they’ve been busy restoring and conciliating the GOP instead of finishing it off, not to mention extending the prior regime’s notorious policies to the point of richly earning the appellative of “Bush Lite”.

So let’s face it: no matter how imprudent, criminal or suicidal the GOP will act, the Democrats will never knock it out of the ring. They can’t because the GOP—utterly repugnant as it is—is their partner in crime, or, to be more anatomically precise, their Siamese twin. You kill one, you kill the other. They need each other for their exquisitely choreographed Kabuki, which apparently still fools most Americans

I doubt that the preceding facts will deter many true believers from pulling the lever for Obama in 2012. In fact, even many of those who fully realize that the Democrats under Obama have become “the More Effective Evil” will dutifully register their support for the Dems come next election cycle. It’s hardwired, the inevitable offshoot of a thoroughly rigged political framework and the force of habit. As Tom Paine himself warned us,

“Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”

Reality will ultimately triumph, that much I believe, but I am not sure the world can afford to wait that long.

Patrice Greanville is The Greanville Post’s Editor in Chief.

Tweetios®-TM Patrice Greanville

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Strauss-Kahn Screws Africa

By Greg Palast

Now that I’ve dispensed with the obvious and obnoxious teaser headline, let’s drop the towel and expose Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s history of arrogant abuse. The truth is, the grandee of the IMF has molested Africans for years.

On Wednesday, the New York Times ran five – count’em, FIVE – stories on Strauss-Kahn, Director-General of the International Monetary Fund. According to the Paper of Record, the charges against “DSK,” as he’s known in France, are in “contradiction” to his “charm” and “accomplishments” at the IMF.

Au contraire, mes chers lecteurs.

Director-General DSK’s cruelty, arrogance and impunity toward African and other nations as generalissimo of the IMF is right in line with the story told by the poor, African hotel housekeeper in New York City.

Let’s consider how the housekeeper from Guinea ended up here in New York. In 2002, this single mother was granted asylum. What drove her here?

It began with the IMF rape of Guinea.

In 2002, the International Monetary Fund cut off capital inflows to this West African nation. Without the blessing of the International Monetary Fund, Guinea, which has up to half the world’s raw material for aluminum, plus oil, uranium, diamonds and gold, could not borrow a dime to develop these resources.

The IMF’s cut-off was, in effect, a foreclosure, and the nation choked and starved while sitting on its astonishing mineral wealth. As in the sub-prime mortgage foreclosures we see today, the IMF moved quickly to seize Guinea’s property.

But the IMF did not seize this nation’s riches for itself. Rather, it forced Guinea to sell off its resources to foreign corporations at prices much like the sale of furniture on the lawn of a foreclosed house.

The French, Americans, Canadians, Swiss (and lately, the Chinese) came in with spoons out and napkins tucked in under their chins, swallowing the nation’s bauxite, gold and more. In the meantime, the IMF ordered the end of trade barriers and thereby ruined local small holders.

As a result of the IMF attack, Guineans who could, fled for freedom and food. This week, then, marked the second time this poor African was molested by the IMF.

Now we have the context of how these two, the randy geezer of globalization and the refugee ended up, in quite different positions, in that New York hotel room.

Since taking over the IMF in 2007, erstwhile “Socialist” Strauss-Kahn has tightened the screws in an attempt to maintain the free-market finance mania that ruined this planet in the first place. [That’s worth a story in itself – and that’s coming. Our team has a stack of inside documents from the IMF that we will be releasing in my new book in the Fall.]

DSK’s lawyers say the relationship with the housekeeper was “consensual.” But DSK says that about all IMF agreements with nations over whom it holds life and death powers. That’s like saying a bank robbery is consensual so long as you don’t consider the gun.

Whether it was agreed-upon sex or brutal rape, it could only have been “consensual” in the same way that the people of Guinea consented to IMF-ordered financial rapine.

The Times article quotes an IMF crony of Strauss-Kahn saying DSK gets his way by “persuasion” not “bullying.” Tell that to the Greeks.

It was DSK who, last year, personally insisted on brutal terms for the so-called bail-out of Greece. “Strong conditionality” is the IMF term. Strauss-Kahn demanded not just a devastating cut in pensions and a deliberate increase in unemployment to 14%, but also the sell-off of 4,000 of 6,000 state-owned services. The DSK IMF plan allowed the financiers who set the financial fires of Greece to pick up the nation’s assets at a fire-sale price.

The Strauss-Kahn demands were not “tough love” for Greece: The love was reserved solely for the vulture bankers who received the IMF funds but were not required to accept one euro in lost profit in return. DSK, despite the advice of many, refused to ask the banks and speculators to reduce their usurious interest charges that were the root of Greece’s woes.

Requiring Greece to sell assets, drop trade barriers, and even end the rule that Greek ships use Greek sailors has nothing to do with saving Greece, but everything to do with DSK’s commitment to protect every banker’s balance sheet from unwanted violations.

I do not consider it a stretch to say that a predator in the bank boardroom suite assumes his impunity applies to the hotel suite.

(c) 2011 Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.” His investigations for BBC TV and Democracy Now! can be seen by subscribing to Palast’s reports at http://www.GregPalast.com/

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The Continued Struggle for Democracy in Egypt

The B u l l e t

Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 509

May 27, 2011

“Only the Names Have Changed”
The Continued Struggle for Democracy in Egypt
Interview with Mamdouh Habashi

President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, second from left, in the Tunis hospital room of Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire after police had confiscated the produce he sold without a permit. The desperate act of this young man ignited the wave of Arab rebellions.

Mamdouh Habashi is Vice-President of the World Forum for Alternatives and an executive board member of the Arab-African Research Centre in Cairo, Egypt.

On May 5, 2011, Constanze Knoche, correspondent and co-editor of Weltnetz TV, took advantage of Mamdouh Habashi’s recent trip to Germany to discuss the current situation in Egypt and the direction of the Egyptian revolution. The following interview is transcribed and translated from the original German.

Constanze Knoche (CK): In early April demonstrations again took place in Tahrir Square and the army used live-fire weapons against protestors. Some would assume that the army and demonstrators are on the same side, and in February the army was neutral. What were the demands of the demonstrators?

Mamdouh Habashi (MH): The army leadership was not neutral, it was never neutral. The army is not operating on a battlefield, but rather in the political sphere. They are following a clear plan. They want to save as much as possible of the old regime’s structures. All the achievements of the revolution are a result of pressure from the street. On Friday, April 1st there were 300,000 people at Tahrir Square; on Friday, April 8th the number swelled to 1,500,000. For the first time, these demonstrations were in opposition to Islamists, Muslim Brotherhood and their allies the Salafists. The motto was “save the revolution, they are stealing it from us!” The demonstrators had not seen a realization of their earlier demands.

Over a million people demonstrated on April 8, 2011.

CK: You stated that the army wants to save the old structures. However, on April 13th they took Hosni Mubarak and his sons into custody, while investigators are looking into their affairs. The governmental party NDP was dissolved. Therefore, some important demands have already been fulfilled. Or are these simply concessions of the government to the protestors?

MH: Yes, these steps are only as a result of the demonstrations, especially the 1.5 million demonstrators on April 8th. There is a list of demands and the government could not avoid giving in to some, like the arrest of Mubarak. But there are many other demands. Some of them were ignored by the council of the armed forces, but after more pressure they had to give in. Examples are the dissolution of the fraudulent parliament and the cabinet of Ahmed Shafik appointed by Mubarak. This sounds as if the council only reacts to what happens. This not the case – they reacted but in keeping with their own plan.

They want to transfer power again to the old structures. The structures are the old Mubarak networks (people with close connections). Even with the dissolution of the Party, the networks still exist. These people have their connections in the security apparatus and with the office for internal affairs. These are groups which are still active in generating disinformation and performing raids. All these counter-revolutionary groups are still in power, despite the demands of the protesters.

CK: You stated that the army council wants to consolidate the old system. Can you provide concrete examples of this?

MH: Already before the April 1st demonstration a very important law was swiftly and stealthily implemented. This law criminalizes protest movements, like demonstrations and strikes. Military courts can mete out sentences of imprisonment or fines up to half a million Egyptian pounds ($83,000 CAD) with minimal legal procedure. That is a huge amount. The law is in effect and several activists (demonstrators, workers, peasants) have already been victimized. Sentences of 5 or 10 years imprisonment were passed during the short proceedings. A few days later, I think two days, another new law on political parties was introduced. This law was a great disappointment for all those who hoped for a democratization of power.

Only the names of those in power have changed and the rules have become more stringent.

The people expected a law that would make it possible for political movements to express and to organize themselves, as it should be in a free world. Instead, what they got was a copy of the Mubarak laws, but even more restrictive. Only the names of those in power have changed and the rules have become more stringent. For instance, at the beginning of the Mubarak era you needed 20 persons to found a party. A few years later it was increased to 50 people, and just prior to 2005 it rose to 1000. Now the council of the armed forces has set the bar at 5000 people and it also requires proof of substantial financial resources before the formation of a party is allowed. In this way they have ensured that only two political parties will be able to get into the new parliament, since the elections are already planned for September 2011.

Which new movement, either left or liberal or democratic, will be able to comply with these new requirements in such a short time? Everyone understands the objective of these new rules: the protection of the old system. The old networks of Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood will appear under a new name with a new look.

CK: That leads to my next question. The council of the armed forces is steadfast on the date of the elections. Can you summarize what the dangers of this fast-track approach are?

MH: If this plan is realized, the main danger is the composition of the parliament. Only the Mubarak network and the Muslim Brothers will be in it. The first thing the parliament has to organize is an assembly for the new constitution. That constitution will be the starting point for the new Egypt and will be used for the coming decades. This would be a catastrophic outcome. From the outside it looks like a successful revolution, but in reality, it is just the opposite. It is just the legalization of the old structures, if this plan goes ahead.

CK: During the demonstrations there was also criticism of Marshal Tantawi, the chairman of the party now in power. What can you tell us about Mr. Tantawi?

MH: Tantawi is the head of the armed forces and long time servant of the regime. The army leadership in Egypt was a part of the old regime. There is at least as much corruption in the army as elsewhere in society. Everyone knows this and people have tried to neutralize the army. The army had to give in a bit, but it is still following its own plan.

CK: If we take a closer look at the armed forces, what influence has the USA had on the armed forces and on the democratization process in Egypt?

MH: The army of Egypt has been turned around 180 degrees. Its transformation has been a long-running process. Originally, the army fought anti-colonial battles; it was a patriotic army that took its duty seriously. Now the army stands shoulder to shoulder with the USA and accomplishes the opposite. It fights with the USA against the people. This turn around took several decades and is related to the Camp David Accords (1979).

The Accords were between the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, but the facilitator was Jimmy Carter, the U.S. President. Carter knew that Egypt had a crucial role in the geo-strategic plans of the USA. It continues to be a strategic cornerstone. It is much more important than say Tunisia or Jordan. Egypt is an exceptional case. In the case of Egypt the USA does not want to lose control. As I often say, the USA has no interest in a democratic Egypt; on the contrary, it wants a false democracy. A false democracy is not as vulgar as a dictatorship, but is still in practice dependent on the USA.

How did they achieve this? Since 1979 the USA has had a large influence on the army and contributed $1.3-billion annually directly to the Egyptian army – not via the Egyptian government. This flow of money is completely uncontrolled, neither by parliament nor by an audit authority. The money flows into private hands, not with the purpose to increase the military power of the army, but to buy its loyalty by diverting the army from its original task – defending the country – and into the economy. Today the army controls at least one-third of the entire economy in Egypt, from real estate and construction to agriculture and the tourism business.

CK: To return to my first question: what expectations may we still have when so much power is held by the army? What does the future hold for the revolution in Egypt?

MH: The new factor is the people. Dictators like Mubarak, made their policies without the factor of the people. It did not exist in their equations; it was of no importance to them. At this moment, however, this factor has the leading role. As long as the people are aware of their power, continuously organizing themselves and wanting (even with sacrifices) to struggle on the streets, there is still hope. And until now this is still the case. •

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