I have been working and thinking about this particular project, featured below, for a while now. It is my newest “open source music video” featuring a Trinidadian calypso by King Austin (Austin Lewis), from 1980. I owe King Austin an enormous debt. I first heard this song in the pub of the University of the West Indies in St. Augustine, Trinidad, one afternoon in mid-August of 1990. It sucked the wind out of me from the very first time, and the song has stayed in my head ever since then. It shaped my approach to the study of international relations, specifically critiques of the Eurocentricity of international developmentalism, as propagated then by Dr. Herb Addo at UWI. It was further fed by the works of George Aseneiro and then Ashis Nandy. Layered with these extra readings and schools of thought, it eventually formed part of the basis for me to enter anthropology (although it was almost literally a toss up between anthropology and sociology that would make my final choice).
The song is a critique of the ideology and practice of progress, from the vantage points of environmental unsustainability, exploitation, inequality, and the resultant social strife. At least part of the vision is inspired by Christian teaching. Yet, his vision is one that has come to be strongly supported by recent scientific research. Indeed, in the days leading up to my concluding work on this video, a striking item was published by the BBC: “Earth on Course for ‘Eco-Crunch’.” It seems that we will need two planets to sustain our current level of consumption, environmental degradation, and growth in population.
Austin Lewis is a modest, unassuming man, who has made the most and very best of the learning made available to him. He says in an interview, “I love every human being very much. It doesn’t matter where you are from. I love all the people and I want to tell them, God bless and have a happy new year.” King Austin asks, as you will hear, some of the primary questions of philosophical importance in what has become an urgent project of utopistics. You can read the complete transcription of the lyrics, as usual, at Guanaguanare’s site, where she also links the message of the song to Steel Pulse’s “Earth Crisis” (you can see the video there, or in my vodpod).
John McCain believes, not without foundation, that the U.S. is a right of center country, but his desperation shows that he is obviously not counting on that as a permanent fact, nor does he explain just how far right he thinks he can push national politics. It must be extremely far right for even some Republicans to begin to defect, notably Colin Powell and Scott McClellan, among several other well known conservative figures.
It’s clear that McCain, who has never stopped fighting the Cold War, whose head is still stuck in bombing runs on Vietnamese cities and the humiliation of captivity, has a deep desire to move the U.S. into far right fascism, specifically war corporatism.
War Corporatism
McCain has spoken very plainly in the presidential debates: a freeze on all social spending (so Sarah Palin, calling for more spending on children with special needs, can basically tell her Trig to get stuffed, unless she thinks there will be a special exemption on new spending, for her family alone), plus no limit on national security and defense spending. How this escaped widespread opprobrium in the U.S. mainstream media provides another piece of the “puzzle,” along with the mass propagation of irrationality through churches, a very poor educational system, and a popular culture that stupefies and infantilizes its consumers. McCain has provided the ingredients for his own definition as a war corporatist: more money for war, and nothing else.
Turkeys Voting for an Early Christmas
“Country first” and “patriotism” do not mean loving one’s fellow Americans, for all of the perverse distortions of Christ that propagate Christianity from plush mega churches. Any hint of “spreading the wealth around” to help fellow Americans is wrongly labeled “socialist” and that is presumably a bad thing, when capitalism has shown itself to be a failed ideology even according to its most notable past proponents.
To attract the votes of some members of the working class, McCain uses classic capitalist and fascist mystification techniques — he resorts to culture and barely veiled appeals to race: the Other, That One, is a terrorist, anti-American, liar and thief who like other Black criminals seeks to sneak into the homes of Good Americans in the middle of the night and steal their property.
McCain uses these techniques so as to blind his working class supporters to their own best interests — the very people who would benefit from “spreading the wealth around,” especially in a situation of increasingly deep economic crisis that will visit great pain and suffering on them, are precisely the ones who rage uncontrollably against any notion of wealth redistribution (see here and here). In other words, “wealth redistribution” is read as Blacks stealing from Whites, just as Ayers is equated to Atta, and Obama assimilated to Osama — it is a constant trope of equivalence and translation.
You’re On Your Own
So as unemployment increases and poverty spreads, McCain promises no new social spending, and no redistribution of wealth. Yet somehow he plans for more war spending which can only come from foreign borrowing (assuming there any foreign lenders left with any confidence in U.S. economic prospects). So what the poor can do is to enlist and fight for McCain and his corporate friends — and with eight houses, 13 cars, and an endless supply of cash, McCain doesn’t have to worry, he got more than his fair share already. You’re on your own, suckers. Go die for your land, and who cares how long troops have to be stationed abroad, no matter what the cost, 50 years, 100 years … just bomb bomb bomb Iran. This man is not “insane”: this is just what fascism actually looks like. And patriotism is revealed as love of country, but where country is an ideological abstraction devoid of human beings, or even basic humanity.
Wealth Redistribution ≠ Socialism
Socialism 101 ought to be offered as part of the standard American curriculum, so that the inexcusable stupidity in American mainstream political discourse can at least stop equating social spending with socialism. The U.S. already has limited forms of “wealth redistribution” in the forms of unemployment assistance, food stamps, etc. If it were the hallmark of socialism, then the U.S. is already socialist, and the charge to be made against Barack Obama is that he is nothing new, and that McCain is no different as he supports nationalizing parts of U.S. banks (their losses, specifically).
The fact remains that wealth redistribution is a defining feature of capitalism, and it is the redistribution of wealth from workers to capitalists. This goes beyond long established corporate welfare — tax holidays, tax cuts, and subsidies to corporations. It has to do with the fact that wealth does not create jobs, rather jobs create wealth for a few. Jobs are what you give those who are denied independent access to resources, so they become dependent on earning a wage. Jobs are what you “give” to citizens who have been denied their birthright as citizens: a share of ownership of a land that should belong to all. Jobs involve people going to work for you, and earning only a fraction of the revenue that they create. Capitalists don’t just get wealthy because they are geniuses, or because they have plans, or take risks — capitalists rely in the first instance on having cheap workers, people who can be paid the least amount possible and yet encouraged to spend the maximum possible.
Socialism goes much further than simple welfarism, and involves a change of ownership in the economy. Obama has proposed nothing of the sort, and it is not the only instance of where Obama’s promised change falls far short.
Dumbing Down: Hating Your Compatriots
That it has to come down to a Colin Powell asking what is the problem if Obama were a Muslim is a sad reflection on the Obama campaign. In the current political discourse, being Arab and/or Muslim in the U.S. has been virtually criminalized. The Obama campaign lets charge after charge go unanswered, such as:
what is the problem with being an Arab?
what counts as terrorism — when between Ayers and McCain only one of them has ever killed innocent civilians, and it’s not Ayers
what if Obama were best of friends with Ayers, do the demonizers actually know of the great campaigns for civil rights, social justice, peace, and education that Ayers has fought for?
why does “Joe the Plumber” count as “more American” than Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright?
why is redistributing some of the wealth to the poor a bad thing? Would a nation of beggars and looters be preferable?
Taxes are also criminalized, or, the bizarre proposition surfaces that once people pay taxes the tax earnings should not be redistributed … when taxes are precisely wealth redistribution.
The ignorance and prejudice that are fostered are astounding, and should count as criminal psychological abuse. One of the great failures of the Obama campaign is that it has not sought to truly educate voters, to combat bigotry and prejudice. More often than not, the Obama campaign automatically resorted to repudiation: yes, Wright is wrong; Ayers is not a friend; I am a Christian and always have been; we don’t want socialism. In the process, the Obama campaign vindicates the McCain message, and underscores their common agreement as to what constitutes the “right values,” what is good and bad, what is desirable and what is repulsive. If McCain is essentially right on so many fronts, which is what the Obama campaign implies by not countering bigotry with education, then why would “four more years of Bush” be such a bad thing? Exactly how was Bush a “failure” then?
This Sea Stallion helicopter, attached to the United States Marines, currently on a visit to Trinidad and Tobago, scouts out the area over Barataria yesterday.
From one of Trinidad’s news dailies, Newsday, this very disappointing piece from Sunday, 26 October, 2008:
Members of the public in Laventille, Curepe, certain parts of the East and Central were jolted out of their beds early yesterday by the roaring sounds of two marine helicopters flying over their homes.
Some of the concerned persons even telephoned Sunday Newsday to ascertain if the United States Marine Corps were carrying out an exercise in the country.
One man said, “the noise from the engines was so powerful that I was awakened from sleep and when I looked out of my house the two helicopters were flying over my house, and I could see the US Marine officers inside,” he said.
Yesterday, Chief of Defence Staff Brigadier Edmund Dillon sought to clear the air on the matter.
He said members of the US Marine Corps are in Trinidad to carry out a number of humanitarian ventures. These include repairs to the Cyril Ross and St Jude’s Home for Girls.
The officers will also provide medical assistance to persons at the Arima and Couva hospitals.
On Monday, the US Marines will formally make public their mission in Trinidad [known] during a ceremony to mark their presence in the country.
Patrick Manning and George W. Bush, 2007
This is obviously occurring with the consent of the regime of Prime Minister Patrick Manning of the ruling “People’s National Movement” (an ironic name if ever there was one). The presence of the Marines is of no benefit to Trinidad — as if this industrialized, petroleum exporting nation could not repair a school — and is instead done to facilitate deeper U.S. military penetration. This is a means of positioning U.S. forces closer to Venezuela, a mere seven miles away. Indeed, Manning has been trying to serve as a counterweight to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez (Manning stands as a featherweight in comparison). Chavez has spent vast amounts on health and development programs in the Caribbean and provided discounted oil. Manning, unwilling to address poverty at home, has tried to create an illusion of alleviating it among his neighbours, as if in a desperate competition with Chavez. One can wonder whether Manning has been put up to this effort by the same forces now rearing their ugly heads in Marine helicopters.
Patrick Manning and Ariel Sharon
This effort clearly brings into being the U.S. plans discussed in previous posts there and there.
In a situation of growing global economic crisis, there seems to be nothing less opportune than further imperial overstretch and increased militarization of the planet, save for the fact that U.S. regimes have committed themselves to war corporatism.
On the website of the Office of the Prime Minister, the only statement that exists for this date concerns the presence of “US Chiefs of Mission” for a HIV/AIDS conference. “Coincidentally,” in February of 2007 the U.S. military had a presence in Trinidad, to train 53 local military officers in HIV/AIDS awareness, as if local resources for the purposes did not exist.
Good luck to Trinidad’s anti-imperialist strugglers in getting rid of these dogs of war.
Even more examples of how the Canadian federal state has betrayed its own citizens and collaborated in having them tortured abroad, and once again a story involving Syria. (Given all of the propaganda about Syria supporting terrorist groups, it’s interesting to note how Western governments inform Syrian authorities of the alleged/concocted “extremist” and “terrorist” ties of particular individuals, knowing the kind of treatment they will get in Syria.) What is also amazing, besides the double talk about Syria, is that there is no outpouring of massive, public protest in Canada. Perhaps that is in part due to the fact that mass media, such as the CBC, couch the entire issue: these are “Arab-Canadian men”, so not quite Canadian, and the role of the RCMP and CSIS was “indirect” — as one of the torture victims said in response:
The RCMP fully knew that I would be tortured if they sent questions. They sent it anyways. Does it make a difference if Justice Iacobucci said directly or indirectly? Well apparently directly means that the Canadian official would be the one holding the whip.
Update: Haroon Siddiqui at The Toronto Star did a good job of noticing that most of the media headlines did not match the content of the stories that followed. Instead, most headlines tended to minimize the level of Canadian complicity. Syria was motivate to imprison and torture these individuals at the urging of Canadian officials in institutions such as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and Foreign Affairs. No consular protection was afforded to these citizens. In one case, Canada urged Egypt not to release one of them after had been transferred there from Syria. CSIS furnished the questions to be used in the Syrian interrogations.
In other words:
This is a country where citizens are sent to be tortured with the assistance of the government.
Find a different way of framing this situation, in a manner that is just as plausible if not more so. If you cannot, ask yourself about what kind of state rules over you, and wonder about how different “liberal democracy” is from any of the other monstrous torture regimes, including the U.S. of course. Then ask yourself why you do nothing about it, and what that says about your role.
According to CBC News, political consultant David Herle, who chaired the two previous Liberal campaigns, said:
We are now again, virtually irrelevant in Western Canada and have lost the beachhead we had in British Columbia. The problems in Quebec remain widespread and deep. The NDP and Greens are encroaching on the Liberal party’s territory from the left.
I never knew the Liberal Party thought of itself as having any “territory” on the “left;” in fact, I have never personally known anyone in Canada who would describe him/herself as being on the “left” and who would vote Liberal. It seems that the Liberals are bemoaning the loss of something they never had. It seems clearer that some of its past supporters have departed both toward the right and the left, to other parties, hence my comment that the centre can no longer hold. The Liberal Party is obviously having trouble inventing a new identity for itself, especially when fewer voters decided to “vote strategically” by choosing it over the Conservative Party. A repository for strategic votes is not an identity; it is an identity defined as an absence, “not Conservative.” “Not Conservative” is simply not good enough.
What is also not good enough is the late-in-the-day attempt by Liberal leader Dion to assert that the Liberals are the party of social justice and environmentalism. Where I reside, Liberal Party posters attempted to define the party as one of “peace” and “against the war in Afghanistan.”
Since I credit Afghanistan with moving me to vote, I could hardly fail to notice the irony — the mendacity — of this new Liberal assertion:
The Liberals began Canada’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan, allegedly beating conservative Australia in being the first country to offer troops to support the U.S. The Liberals have not since explained why they are now against the war they started.
Among the Liberals’ top tier is Michael Ignatieff, one of the world’s better known “new imperialists” — have the Liberals repudiated imperialism? If so, when did it happen, and why?
The Liberals were the ones to first abide by the abusive detention in Guantanamo of someone who at the very worst could be labeled a “child soldier,” and here I refer to Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who never had the aid of his government, to which all citizens are entitled. When and why did the Liberals ever decide they were now concerned about Khadr?
The Liberal government in 2002 collaborated with and supported the U.S. in sending Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, to be tortured in Syria
Invasion, secret detention, torture, and the new imperialism — and the Liberals want to claim they had “territory” on the left that others are “encroaching” upon. They are going to need to learn some modesty, and how to be honest with themselves, before they can continue their journey to a new identity.
ceaseless chatter