Anti-Semitic Treaty?

Hasn't it occured to anyone else how Anti-Semitic the ban on cluster bombs is? I mean, it's obvious the anti-Israel extremists are trying to take away Israel's right to deploy weapons which are, and I quote, "highly useful on the battlefield".

That's why they were used to extensively during Israel's war with Lebanon (or "Hezbollah" if you bend that way) in 2006, one presumes. In total, the Israelis dropped around 4 million "bomblets", up to a million of which may not have exploded. These unexploded bomblets are responsible for the death and disfiguration of up to 200 Lebanese since the end of the war. Children are more likely to be the victims of this since the round "bomblets" can be confused for toys.

Luckily Israel, along with other brave nations such as the U.S, India, China, Russia and Pakistan, is not a signatory to this outrageous treaty and so will continue to deploy this "highly useful battlefield device" whenever the terrorists threaten our way of life.

Well, thank god for that!

"Elitism", Class and American Politics

An interesting article in the Worker this week outlining the impact of class on American political discourse focussed on the recent attack against Obama that he is an "elitist". The fake furore erupted months ago when Obama was recorded saying that people in rural American towns had grown "bitter" and become "attached to guns and religion" because of the failure of the American political system to deliver meanginful improvements in their lives.

Now, apart from being demonstrably true, this quote and the way the media reported it indicated some quite interesting aspects of the "American Ideology". Zizek said in the 'Sublime Object' that ideology - attempts to explain and interpret the world by way of a single operation (Marxism, Capitalism, Ecology) - always leaves behind a "real, hard kernel" that cannot be incorporated. This "constitutive lack" is the fragment of the real world that not only cannot be incorporated ("quilted") but is also, in a sense, crucial to the formation of the ideology in the first instance.

To give an example: capitalist ideology would say that we are "free" under capitalism - free speech, free labour, freedom of religion, association etc, etc. And whilst this is true (let's imagine that these freedoms are not being eroded every day) the "freedom" we enjoy under capitalism exists simultaneousy, and indeed is derived from, a very real unfreedom - that is, the fact that every worker under capitalism is forced to sell their labour power to capitalists.

In America, this works in quite a specific way. American society is built on the prospect (illusion) of social mobility for those at the bottom - the American dream (so-called because, as George Carlin says, you need to be asleep to believe in it). This has helped to create the illusion, and concomitant political discourse, of "classlessness".

But what is the reality? The reality is that not only is American one of the most unequal, class divided societies in the world but that it is increasingly so. The bottom 80 percent of Americans owned only 15 percent of all wealth in 2001, a three percentage point decrease since the 1980's (we should all know how and why this came about). In the industrialized world, only in Switzerland does the inequality instrinsic to capitalism appear as stark as it does in America.

The point being that when Obama mentions class, however obliquely, it arouses displeasure precisely because "class" is this "real, hard kernel" which cannot be incorporated. Class is the trauma, the original moment of crisis that warped the social space for the "classless" society. So the media elites and the politicians flap around for a insult (elitism! that'll do), a way of burying the trauma again, so that polite discourse can carry on. Talking about class to an American politician/journalist would be, for them, like trying to hold a discussion with someone who had a great gaping, weeping sore on their forehead - uncomfortable, all averted eyes and sneaked glances.

The only way it can possibly be dealt with is by finding a useful proxy - this is where "elitism" becomes useful. According to this metric, Barack Obama is part of the elite, but Hillary Clinton and John McCain aren't. The fact that Clinton and McCain are both from hugely powerful and wealthy political families and Obama is not isn't important. "Elitism" here refers to a demeanour, a certain "folkish" quality that can be conferred on politicians who hold your "values".

George Bush, that down-home ordinary Texan who chews tobacco, hunts and loves God is not part of the Elite. Obama, the snobbish, effete liberal who Hates America and is probably a sleeper agent for Al-Qaeda, is part of the Elite.

So, how do the American elites deal with "class"? That's it, by not dealing with it.

To be fair, this is how I routinely deal with my problems.

Socialists for Obama?

My interest in the campaign of Barack Obama to become President America has had a long gestation. It began a little less than a year ago when I heard the excellent journalist Gary Younge give a talk on the topic of African-Americans and their struggles at Marxism 2007. Whilst admitting that an Obama victory would be primarily of symbolic importance, Younge argued, persuasively I thought, that symbols matter. The "symbol" of a mixed-race man raised in, by all accounts, humble conditions by a single mother becoming President on a platform emphasizing his "premature" opposition to the War in Iraq would be a powerful one. Amongst his other foreign policy promises is to meet "without prior conditions" the leaders of America's enemies.

His domestic policy program is a fairly standard reproduction of the traditional Democratic Party formula: steps towards universal health care, soft-Keynesian economics, taxes on "profiteering" Oil companies, vague opposition to trade deals, environmental concerns, support for choice etc. It contains all the same compromises and deficiencies one would expect. His assurances that he would be willing to "bomb Pakistan" if it looked likely to become a safe haven for Al-Qaeda members fleeing the meltdown in Afghanistan was an attempt at "toughness" that now seems entirely incongruent. His earlier "sympathy" with the Palestinians has been replaced with AIPAC adoration and the routine about the special relationship with the Israeli ethnocracy.

His opponent in the race is Hillary Clinton, who supported the War and whose foreign policy includes a commitment to "obliterating Iran" if it attacks Israel. This assurance, whilst totally in line with her strict neocon foreign policy (she was, apparently, instrumental in her husband's decision to bomb Serbia in the 1990's) is completely silly and would constitute a violation of the constitution of the United States, in which only Congress can give authorization to declare war. Hillary's main claim on the trail has been that she's "experienced", although, as most observers have pointed out, this "experience" includes things like the entirely failed attempt to introduce Universal health care during the first Clinton's administration.

On the question of finance, Obama has raised more money than any other Presidential campaign in History at this stage, and has done so mainly on the back of a million or so small donors. He has refused to accept money from Federal PAC's (Political Action Committees), claiming correctly that you can't be the voice for working people in Washington if you accept money from groups designed to silence that voice.

More recently, the media campaign has centred on a particularly ugly attack on Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, whose remarks about American foreign policy and its malcontents scandalized an American public who assumed America had been handing out free candy in the Middle East for the past 15 years. This has led to a "problem" for Obama, particularly amongst older "white working class" (yes, this term has been imported from America!) voters. Obama also got himself into some bother when he said that white working class people in rural towns in the Midwest had become "bitter" and attached themselves to "guns and religion". First of all, if you consider that in a state like Ohio 1 in 10 people are now on food stamps, it's small wonder Americans are "bitter". Second of all, the policy of the Republicans (to support the redistribution of guns and god but not food or wealth) seems to add some weight to Obama's comments.

The Republican candidate is a mentally ill 71-year old named John McCain of noble (inbred) extraction who played his part in the killing of men, women and children in Vietnam, was captured by the Viet minh and tortured, an unfortunate episode that apparently led to him revealing secrets in return for his own safety. He is running on a platform of a hundred year occupation of Iraq, a retrenchment of Bush's tax cuts for the rich and a health care policy I doubt even he understands. He also, in uncommonly comical mood for a man known for his violent temper, called for the U.S to "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" to the tune of a well-known Beach Boys track. I can't think of what the world would look like with this crazed neo con as Emperor - well, actually, probably about the same as it does now.

I mention all this because I'm a little bit perplexed about the attitude of the British left to all this. I can remember having discussions with people at the time of the 2005 election about the realities involved in calling for a "defeat for Blair". I pointed out that if Blair was defeated this would almost certainly mean, in reality, a conservative government led by, god almighty, Michael Howard. However, leftists seem to be less willing to express support for defeating McCain at all costs. Why?

Well, first of all, there is the purely reflexive response ("they're all the same"). When one points out that they're not (McCain's Thousand Year Reich vs. Obama's opposition to the War) the differences are then declared inconsequential.


Off the top of my head, I can think of one group to whom these differences have consequence - the people of Iraq! Don't we think that we should try and support politicians who claim to oppose the war and occupation of Iraq (and Obama's claim is more convincing than most), as well as continue to build the anti-war movement? Don't left-wing anti-war Americans have the right and the duty to Iraqis to try and elect Obama as opposed to John McSame, if that is the choice presented?


Secondly, they posit the zero sum game ("We need to build the anti-war movement, never mind elect anti-war Presidents"). If this is true, why did we bother calling for a vote against Blair? If we're being consistent, we would have hope to see ALL the warmongers defeated, not just the British variety.

Thirdly, we can't support Obama because he's a Democrat ("Vote Ralph Nader"). This is perhaps the most attractive alternative to Obama and the Democrats. Nader is, after all, an appealing reformist politician who has gained some good support in the past. Does that mean we should support him every time he decides to run no matter what the other factors to be considered? I don't think so. If the choice between Obama and McCain is this stark, I think we can safely call for a vote for the Democrat. The principle reason why Nader did so well in 2000 is that there was simply no substantive difference in the campaigns of Gore and Bush. Nader's campaign helped to bring Gore to the Left a bit, and his eventual vote was an impressive one. He ran in 2004, when the choice again seemed stark to most Americans, and he didn't do nearly as well. He won't do well in 2008 either, I don't think.

It's always hard to support politicians as a socialist. We're naturally inclined to be suspicious of people in suits and ties. Obama is a not a radical. He's not committed to Soviet power and the outlawing of wage slavery, that's clear.

But on the most important issue in the world right now (the growing humanitarian and political disaster in Iraq) he stands - tentatively, insecurely but clearly - on the opposite side to his opponent.

People should think about this on those terms and realise that there's only one conclusion.