Are the Greek riots a taste of things to come?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/are-the-greek-riots-a-taste-of-things-to-come-1064479.html

Greece's riots are a sign of the economic times. Other countries should beware, says Peter Popham in Athens

After firing 4,600 tear-gas canisters in the past week, the Greek police have nearly exhausted their stock. As they seek emergency supplies from Israel and Germany, still the petrol bombs and stones of the protesters rain down, with clashes again outside parliament yesterday.

Bringing together youths in their early twenties struggling to survive amid mass youth unemployment and schoolchildren swotting for highly competitive university exams that may not ultimately help them in a treacherous jobs market, the events of the past week could be called the first credit-crunch riots. There have been smaller-scale sympathy attacks from Moscow to Copenhagen, and economists say countries with similarly high youth unemployment problems such as Spain and Italy should prepare for unrest.

Ostensibly, the trigger for the Greek violence was the police shooting of a 15-year-old boy, Alexis Grigoropoulos. A forensic report leaked to Greek newspapers indicated he was killed by a direct shot, not a ricochet as the policeman's lawyer had claimed. The first protesters were on the streets of Athens within 90 minutes of Alexis's death, the start of the most traumatic week Greece has endured for decades. The destructiveness of the daily protests, which left many stores in Athens's smartest shopping area in ruins and caused an estimated €2bn (£1.79bn) in damage, has stunned Greece and baffled the world. And there was no let-up yesterday, as angry youths shrugged off torrential rain to pelt police with firebombs and stones, block major roads and occupy a private radio station.

Their parents grope for explanations. Tonia Katerini, whose 17-year-old son Michalis was out on the streets the day after the killing, emphasised the normality of the protesters. "It's not just 20 or 30 people, we're talking about 1,000 young people. These are not people who live in the dark, they are the sort you see in the cafes. The criminals and drug addicts turned up later, to loot the stores. The children were very angry that one of them had been killed; and they wanted the whole society not to sleep quietly about this, they wanted everyone to feel the same fear they felt. And they were also expressing anger towards society, towards the religion of consumerism, the polarisation of society between the few haves and the many have-nots."

Protest has long been a rite of passage for urban Greek youth. The downfall of the military dictatorship in 1974 is popularly ascribed to a student uprising; the truth was more complicated, but that is the version that has entered student mythology, giving them an enduring sense of their potential. So no one was surprised that Alexis's death a week ago today brought his fellow teenagers on to the streets. But why were the protests so impassioned and long-lasting? "The death of this young boy was a catalyst that brought out all the problems of society and of youth that have been piling up all these years and left to one side with no solutions," said Nikos Mouzelis, emeritus professor of sociology at LSE. "Every day, the youth of this country experiences further marginalisation."

Although Greece's headline unemployment of 7.4 per cent is just below the eurozone average, the OECD estimates that unemployment among those aged 15 to 24 is 22 per cent, although some economists put the real figure at more like 30 per cent.

"Because of unemployment, a quarter of those under 25 are below the poverty line," said Petros Linardos, an economist at the Labour Institute of the Greek trade unions. "That percentage has been increasing for the past 10 years. There is a diffused, widespread feeling that there are no prospects. This is a period when everyone is afraid of the future because of the economic crisis. There is a general feeling that things are going to get worse. And there is no real initiative from the government."

For Greek youngsters such as Michalis Katerini, job prospects are not rosy, but without a university degree they would be far worse, so he and his mother are making serious sacrifices to get him into further education. So inadequate is the teaching in his state high school that he, like tens of thousands of others across the country, must study three hours per night, five nights a week at cramming school after regular school, to have a hope of attaining the high grades required to get the university course of his choice. His mother, whose work as an architect is down 20 per cent on last year, must pay €800 a month to the crammer for the last, crucial year of high school.

She believes the government of Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis faces more turbulence if it fails to grasp the reality of the past week, and pass it off as a spontaneous over-reaction. "The government has tried hard not to connect what is happening with the problems of young people. The government says one boy died, his friends are angry, they over-reacted then anarchists came to join in the game. But this is not the reality."

Vicky Stamatiadou, a kindergarten teacher in the rich northern suburbs with two teenage sons, agrees. "Until now, our society was full of dirty but calm water; nothing was moving, nothing improving, all the problems of our society remained unsolved for years. People pretended that everything was going well. But now this false picture has been broken and we are facing reality."

Greece's official youth unemployment statistics are not far removed from the rates in other European countries with a history of mass protest, such as France, Italy and Spain. With the graffiti "The Coming Insurrection" plastered near the Greek consulate in Bordeaux this week, the warning signs to the rest of the continent's leaders are clear.

Additional reporting by Nikolas Zirganos

Down with the government of murderers!

Our answer will be to resist and to keep fighting to overthrow the policy of police oppression, austerity and racism

Demonstrate: Sunday 7/12/2008, Assemble Museum, 13.00 Monday

We, the organisations of the anticapitalist left that sign this text, want to condemn the murder, in cold blood, of 16-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos by a police special guard in the evening of December 6. We salute the demonstrations against the government of murderers all over Greece. In our opinion the reason for what happened is not the “extreme zeal” or the “loss of temper” or the “lack of training” of a police special guard but the whole policy of the New Democracy government.

It is a policy that not only reinforces police oppression and legitimizes the use of lethal weapons against demonstrators, but also privatises the ports and Olympic Airlines, attacks social security and the rights of students.

It is the policy of police beatings of students, of the kidnappings of immigrants from Pakistan, of illegal interceptions of phone communications and of racist attacks that lead to the death of refugees that came here looking for asylum and a better future.

It is the policy of special “antiterrorist” legislation, of full compliance to the measures adopted by the EU against democratic liberties and against immigrants.

It is the policy of the new legal framework for the Universities, of legalizing Private Universities. It is the policy of lower wages and rising taxes. Amidst an economic crisis the government is trying on the one hand to offer billions of euros to the Banks and on the other to find scapegoats either in radical youth or in immigrants.

After the brutal murder the government has chosen the path of police repression. That is why police anti-riot squads attacked those who were demonstrating. The Socialist Party, PASOK, has offered its consent to this policy. The message is simple: the government will enforce its policy at any cost, a policy that will make the workers pay for the economic crisis, by means of austerity, flexible work, privatisations, implementation of the EU policies.

The anger of the demonstrators is fuelled by the policies of the government, of the forces of capital, of the EU. That is why the protest must grow stronger. We must meet in the streets with the struggling workers, farmers and students. We will not pay for their crisis. Today anger is not enough. What is needed is collective and militant struggle in every workplace, every neighborhood, in order to transform them into places of resistance and overthrow the government and its policy.

Down with the New Democracy government of murderers and its policy
Capital must pay for its crisis, not the workers and youth.
Let’s escalate the struggle for our rights
The ministers that are responsible must resign
The police must be disarmed, police forces must keep away from demonstrations, and Police Special Forces must be disbanded.
Release all people arrested during the demonstrations.
Repeal “antiterrorist”˙ and authoritarian laws

8/12/2008

The organizations of the Greek anticapitalist Left : ARAN (Left Recomposition), ARAS (Left Anticapitalist Group), EKKE (Revolutionary Communist Movement of Greece), EEK (Workers Revolutionary Party), OKDE, OKDE-Spartacus (Fourth International), SEK (Socialist Workers Party ), NAR-N.K.A. (New Left Current-Youth Communist Liberation), K.O. Anasyntaxi (Communist Organization Regroupment), K.A. (Communist Renewal), EN.ANTI.A (United Anticapitalist Left), ME.R.A. (Front of Radical Left).

From Duncan: 3 weeks in Latin America

Hello all,

Countries I have spent time in so far: Venezuela - 2 weeks and Cuba - 1 week.

In Venezuela I was part of an organised brigade, which was to look at that Countries 'Bolivarian revolution". We looked at a number of things and writing about them could be another email entirely - it was quite an interesting and inspiring experience, about a downtrodden and third world country making themselves have some social missions (programs) that are better than first world systems. We got to see Barrio Addrentro - a health care mission, which gives free health care, including dental to the population. Some of the people I was with needed a GP so went to Barrio Adrento 1, and got treated with in 3 minutes of walking in the door, which it sounds like is a standard.

Before the current government of Chavez came to power it was very expensive, and people had to pay for their own materials.

We also got to see some Workers Co-operatives - a shoe and textile one, where the decisions of how the factory was run was decided every month, in a democratic meeting of all the workers, and meetings could happen more often than this.

My shoes were falling apart and the shoe co-operative fixed my shoes for free. In between making shoes that were to be freely distributed to school children - bought and paid for by the government.

We also got to hear about a new school for people with problems with vision, (vision impaired people including blind people). This is government initiated and paid for by Chavez government. It is the first of its kind in Latin America and a refreshing change in defunding like in many other countries.

in Australia we do not even have a government sponsored school like this.

We also went to stay in the neighbourhood with a family and saw a new experience of community councils. This was the largest one that is working in Venezuela, and is a collection of a number of small community councils in a city called Valencia. The whole commune was called something along the lines of commune of 1 thousand houses - meaning there were more than a thousand houses and more than a thousand families in this commune. The first night we met with all of the spokespeople - elected by there communities - about 150 of them.

We saw a club for grandparents being built, as well as some food hoses - to feed people that can not afford food, but with the aim of giving them the skills and means to make and buy there own food - this was probably one of the most nutritious meals we had in Venezuela here.

Daniel (one of the local organisers) guided us around, providing buses to show us around each time.

It was also good as we saw the social missions first hand and we got to see the people's reaction to it.

From the local dental clinic - which was near the house I stayed in, to the vaccinations.

We also saw the elections for local governors and councils. They had many systems there to stop fraud like Florida 2001. Including a hard copy back up of votes, as well as the electronic ones for re-counts and a complex checking system (anonymous) to make sure people did not vote twice. People were that keen to vote that wheel chair users were being helped up stairs (there is still a fair bit of a way to go on this in terms of access in Venezuela (as there is also in Australia) in terms of universal access to facilities. These elections were important, as even for simple things some candidates from both side of the political fence - pro (at least in name) and anti chavista parties had not been doing what they said they would, even for simple things like rubbish collection.

We ended up the brigade going to a Caribbean town where we swam, drank white rum and fresh coconuts on the beach and had fresh fish for break feast. To get there we had to go throught a windy cliff road, with a fast bus driver playing very (I mean very loud) music). This was an amazing experience with dense jungle on either side and the bus going very close to the edge. The rum in Venezuela was only $10 for 1 litre, and ws pretty good, but the white rum was a bt more, being nicer as well.

We also had meeting with a number of activists and community figures through out the brigade.

Venezuela are very happy about this and starting to take ownership of the social programs. And to see health care and education programs better than Australia in a country that is part of the global south is quite amazing. We also saw the university, which is free, the education to make everyone literate - with Venezuela now classified as a literacy free zone by the UN.

We also got to see Hugo Chavez speak to a rally, which was exciting, but would have been more so if I understood more of it - as we did not have translators for this part.

In Cuba it was a bit more of a relaxed schedule. Going to see some things like Revolution Square which had a museum about José Marti - a figure in volved in fighting for liberation from the Spanish and then the US in the 19th century.

Saw Museum dela Revolution - which went through Cuba's history from the indigenous peoples that lived there, to Spanish conquest to the slave trade to the 10 years war against the Spanish and the take over by the USA of Cuba. I got into all the tourist things for free, like the museum of Jose Marti and the Museum De la revolution due to my white stick, the bus is also free for school students and for blind / vision impaired people.

It was interesting to see Cuba now, and think about what it was like before 1959, before the J26 movement came to power and then the elections in 75 I think, there was a massive rate of illiteracy - at 90%, to a country that now exports more doctors and medical staff than the entire world health organisation, including to the latest earth quakes in Pakistan.

We also had lunch listening to live music - similar style to some of the Buena vista social club music.

Saw local permaculture gardens, met with some of the people in the ministry of science involved in developing Cuba's food and forests . The way Cuban coffee is grown is quite interesting - having to be grown between the trees. Cuba is also rated as the only Sustainable country by the WWF.

I found walking and travelling in both countries interesting. Both had rough - broken concrete roads - Venezuela was worse than Cuba. Venezuela they did not like to pay attention to traffic lights. It was interesting as people noticed that my cane stopped traffic more effectively than the traffic lights. I also had people escort me across the road in both countries. In Venezuela I even got an armed escort with the National guard (part of the Army) , who were guarding the Palace. In Cuba there were lots of old Cars pre - 1959, some of which were in immaculate condition. Although some of the roads and footpaths were not in great condition (they were in better condition that I would have thought considering the illegal blockade of Cuba by the US) people were very quick to help, particularly to stop me from going into a hole (my cane was about to find it and a man called out in Spanish that there was a hole).

In Cuba We Drank mahitos, Cuban rum and Cuban coffee. Again I may write more on Cuba, as I am sure if you are still reading your attention is waning.

I am now in Germany - in a beautiful little village called Volmarstein, where it is currently -2 degrees C (a change from the tropics of Venezuela and Cuba), and the grass is frozen.

I am staying on a farm with a very welcoming family.

Any way I'll try to write more later.

Keep in touch

Duncan

Afghan war to blame for refugees

It seems pretty obvious that the war in Afghanistan is causing people from there to leave and find somewhere safe to live. Australia needs to end it's support for the war in Afghanistan, pull our troops out and accept Afghan refugees.

Afghan war to blame for refugee 'spike': advocate

In the last three months six boats, carrying a total of 127 refugees, have been intercepted in Australian waters asking for asylum.

The Federal Opposition has accused the Government of having sub-standard refugee policies, after the Royal Australian Navy yesterday stopped another boatload of asylum seekers near Broome.

In the last three months six boats, carrying a total of 127 refugees, have been intercepted in Australian waters asking for asylum.

The Federal Government says the upturn in would-be arrivals is due to seasonal conditions, while the Opposition contends that people-smugglers are taking advantage of changed immigration laws, including the abolition of temporary protection visas and the dismantling of the Howard government's so-called Pacific Solution.

But refugee advocate Phil Glendenning, from the Edmund Rice Centre, has told The World Today's Felicity Ogilvie that the recent increase is a result of the intensifying war in Afghanistan.

"I think the recent increase, albeit a very slight increase, in people coming here, is due to one very important point; and that is the increase in the severity and the dangers people face in the war in Afghanistan," he said.

"People are fleeing from the war. People are fleeing from persecution. It has been predicted by the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees that there would be this increase because of the conflicts that are taking place internationally, particularly in Afghanistan. And that is what we are seeing and we shouldn't be surprised by it."

And Mr Glendenning said it was not correct to speak of a "spike" in the numbers of people seeking asylum in recent months.

"The use of the term spike is a problem for one reason - and that is the facts," he said.

"The facts of the matter are this, that the total number of asylum seekers detained in Australia seeking to come here by boat this year numbers 127. Last year when the Coalition were in power, the number was 150.

"So you can hardly call it a spike. When you look at it the numbers are actually less this year than they were last year.

"What this points to, however, is that where there are inappropriate or not sufficient processes to deal with those who are the victims of war, then people smugglers will step up and take the place and fill the vacuum."

"You have got to remember that the war in Afghanistan currently now, as opposed to last year, is much worse, much, much worse.

"And we know that because our soldiers are there fighting a war and tragically our soldiers have being killed there.

"People who are in the midst of a war zone, will seek to get out."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/12/08/2440722.htm

Bill Ayers: What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4028/what_a_long_strange_trip_its_been

What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been
Looking back on a surreal campaign season
By Bill Ayers

Whew! What was all that mess? I’m still in a daze, sorting it all out, decompressing.
Pass the Vitamin C.

For the past few years, I have gone about my business, hanging out with my kids and, now, my grandchildren, taking care of our elders (they moved in as the kids moved out), going to work, teaching and writing. And every day, I participate in the never-ending effort to build a powerful and irresistible movement for peace and social justice.

In years past, I would now and then—often unpredictably—appear in the newspapers or on TV, sometimes with a reference to Fugitive Days, my 2001 memoir of the exhilarating and difficult years of resistance against the American war in Vietnam. It was a time when the world was in flames, revolution was in the air, and the serial assassinations of black leaders disrupted our utopian dreams.

These media episodes of fleeting notoriety always led to some extravagant and fantastic assertions about what I did, what I might have said and what I probably believe now.
It was always a bit surreal. Then came this political season.

During the primary, the blogosphere was full of chatter about my relationship with President-elect Barack Obama. We had served together on the board of the Woods Foundation and knew one another as neighbors in Chicago’s Hyde Park. In 1996, at a coffee gathering that my wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and I held for him, I made a donation to his campaign for the Illinois State Senate.

Obama’s political rivals and enemies thought they saw an opportunity to deepen a dishonest perception that he is somehow un-American, alien, linked to radical ideas, a closet terrorist who sympathizes with extremism—and they pounced.

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) campaign provided the script, which included guilt by association, demonization of people Obama knew (or might have known), creepy questions about his background and dark hints about hidden secrets yet to be uncovered.

On March 13, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), apparently in an attempt to reassure the “base,” sat down for an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News. McCain was not yet aware of the narrative Hannity had been spinning for months, and so Hannity filled him in: Ayers is an unrepentant “terrorist,” he explained, “On 9/11, of all days, he had an article where he bragged about bombing our Pentagon, bombing the Capitol and bombing New York City police headquarters. … He said, ‘I regret not doing more.’ “
McCain couldn’t believe it.
Neither could I.
On the campaign trail, McCain immediately got on message. I became a prop, a cartoon character created to be pummeled.
When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin got hold of it, the attack went viral. At a now-famous Oct. 4 rally, she said Obama was “pallin’ around with terrorists.” (I pictured us sharing a milkshake with two straws.)

The crowd began chanting, “Kill him!” “Kill him!” It was downhill from there.
My voicemail filled up with hate messages. They were mostly from men, all venting and sweating and breathing heavily. A few threats: “Watch out!” and “You deserve to be shot.” And some e-mails, like this one I got from satan@hell.com: “I’m coming to get you and when I do, I’ll water-board you.”

The police lieutenant who came to copy down those threats deadpanned that he hoped the guy who was going to shoot me got there before the guy who was going to water-board me, since it would be most foul to be tortured and then shot. (We have been pals ever since he was first assigned to investigate threats made against me in 1987, after I was hired as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.)

The good news was that every time McCain or Palin mentioned my name, they lost a point or two in the polls. The cartoon invented to hurt Obama was now poking holes in the rapidly sinking McCain-Palin ship.

That ’60s show
On Aug. 28, Stephen Colbert, the faux right-wing commentator from Comedy Central who channels Bill O’Reilly on steroids, observed:
To this day, when our country holds a presidential election, we judge the candidates through the lens of the 1960s. … We all know Obama is cozy with William Ayers a ’60s radical who planted a bomb in the capital building and then later went on to even more heinous crimes by becoming a college professor. … Let us keep fighting the culture wars of our grandparents. The ’60s are a political gift that keeps on giving.

It was inevitable. McCain would bet the house on a dishonest and largely discredited vision of the ’60s, which was the defining decade for him. He built his political career on being a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
The ’60s—as myth and symbol—is much abused: the downfall of civilization in one account, a time of defeat and humiliation in a second, and a perfect moment of righteous opposition, peace and love in a third.

The idea that the 2008 election may be the last time in American political life that the ’60s plays any role whatsoever is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, let’s get over the nostalgia and move on. On the other, the lessons we might have learned from the black freedom movement and from the resistance against the Vietnam War have never been learned. To achieve this would require that we face history fully and honestly, something this nation has never done.

The war in Vietnam was an illegal invasion and occupation, much of it conducted as a war of terror against the civilian population. The U.S. military killed millions of Vietnamese in air raids—like the one conducted by McCain—and entire areas of the country were designated free-fire zones, where American pilots indiscriminately dropped surplus ordinance—an immoral enterprise by any measure.

What is really important
McCain and Palin—or as our late friend Studs Terkel put it, “Joe McCarthy in drag”—would like to bury the ’60s. The ’60s, after all, was a time of rejecting obedience and conformity in favor of initiative and courage. The ’60s pushed us to a deeper appreciation of the humanity of every human being. And that is the threat it poses to the right wing, hence the attacks and all the guilt by association.

McCain and Palin demanded to “know the full extent” of the Obama-Ayers “relationship” so that they can know if Obama, as Palin put it, “is telling the truth to the American people or not.”
This is just plain stupid.

Obama has continually been asked to defend something that ought to be at democracy’s heart: the importance of talking to as many people as possible in this complicated and wildly diverse society, of listening with the possibility of learning something new, and of speaking with the possibility of persuading or influencing others.

The McCain-Palin attacks not only involved guilt by association, they also assumed that one must apply a political litmus test to begin a conversation.
On Oct. 4, Palin described her supporters as those who “see America as the greatest force for good in this world” and as a “beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy.” But Obama, she said, “Is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America.” In other words, there are “real” Americans — and then there are the rest of us.
In a robust and sophisticated democracy, political leaders—and all of us—ought to seek ways to talk with many people who hold dissenting, or even radical, ideas. Lacking that simple and yet essential capacity to question authority, we might still be burning witches and enslaving our fellow human beings today.

Maybe we could welcome our current situation—torn by another illegal war, as it was in the ’60s—as an opportunity to search for the new.
Perhaps we might think of ourselves not as passive consumers of politics but as fully mobilized political actors. Perhaps we might think of our various efforts now, as we did then, as more than a single campaign, but rather as our movement-in-the-making.

We might find hope in the growth of opposition to war and occupation worldwide. Or we might be inspired by the growing movements for reparations and prison abolition, or the rising immigrant rights movement and the stirrings of working people everywhere, or by gay and lesbian and transgender people courageously pressing for full recognition.
Yet hope—my hope, our hope—resides in a simple self-evident truth: the future is unknown, and it is also entirely unknowable.

History is always in the making. It’s up to us. It is up to me and to you. Nothing is predetermined. That makes our moment on this earth both hopeful and all the more urgent—we must find ways to become real actors, to become authentic subjects in our own history.
We may not be able to will a movement into being, but neither can we sit idly for a movement to spring full-grown, as from the head of Zeus.

We have to agitate for democracy and egalitarianism, press harder for human rights, learn to build a new society through our self-transformations and our limited everyday struggles.
At the turn of the last century, Eugene Debs, the great Socialist Party leader from Terre Haute, Ind., told a group of workers in Chicago, “If I could lead you into the Promised Land, I would not do it, because someone else would come along and lead you out.”

In this time of new beginnings and rising expectations, it is even more urgent that we figure out how to become the people we have been waiting to be.

Between Hope and Reality

An Open Letter to Barack Obama
By RALPH NADER, Counterpunch

Dear Senator Obama:

In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope and change," "change and hope" have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not "hope and change" but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.

Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?

To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.

You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed negotiations with Hamas-- the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored "direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state."

During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.

David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President."

Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its 'legitimate right to defend itself.'"

In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed" in early 2008.

Israeli writer and peace advocate-- Uri Avnery-- described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future-- if and when he is elected president.," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people."

A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.

Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque." None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans-- even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.

Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.

Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to "tumultuous applause," following a showing of a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!

But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the "middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor" in America.

Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke "change" yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the "corporate supremacists." It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics-- opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)-- and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.

Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. "Hope" some say springs eternal." But not when "reality" consumes it daily.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

History is made

US Socialist Worker, November 4

AS SOON as it became clear that Obama was over the top, the tone of the media changed to one of reverence in recognition of the historic significance of the election of the first African American president.

And yet, coming out of the mouth of someone like MSNBC's Chris Matthews, it was a travesty. Matthews used the opportunity of Obama's moment of victory to brag about how great America is--having done, he claimed, what no other advanced country had in electing a Black head of state.

What hollow cant in the face of America's long and vicious history of racist barbarism--a country founded on slavery and made into a "great power" with the use of systematic racism.

But not even this hot air could overshadow the sense of exhilaration and tear-filled celebration among ordinary people, wherever they were gathered:

In Harlem in New York City, Brian Jones reports:

Several solid blocks of people celebrating. A giant mural depicts Malcolm X and Obama. Out of a sound system came the song "Ain't No Stopping Us Now," and the streets turned into a giant dance party. On the jumbo-tron, McCain is conceding, but the sound is breaking up. But no one wants to hear him anyway, so they put on Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours."

Outside the White House, a spontaneous crowd gathered to celebrate Obama's victory and jeer George Bush, who is reported to have called Obama to congratulate him. The contrast between Obama's sweeping win that has transformed the so-called "electoral map," and Bush's theft of the White House in 2000, on the basis of the disenfranchisement of African American voters in Florida, could not be more stark.

And in Grant Park in downtown Chicago, there was a vast sea of people, filling every visible corner of the huge lakefront area. The pictures really are worth a thousand words: dozens of young people with their fists raised in triumph, whole families dancing in the cramped space, tears flowing down the faces of older African American women, flags waving, singing and chanting.

As Lee Sustar described from downtown:

As Obama was headed in his motorcade to speak, people were still streaming toward Grant Park. The crowd is very racially mixed. All ages, though mostly young.

I just encountered a group of 10 Sri Lankan sisters and brothers, non-citizens who came down. "This is a moment to remember," they told me. "We're living through a moment of history. I want to be able to tell my children and grandchildren I was here to cheer on Barack Obama."

To them, Obama's victory represents something that they have seen only very rarely in the past generation. They know that the door is closing on an old era, and that a new one is beginning. --Alan Maass